382 ANIMAL BIOLOGY 



children are raised under conditions of extreme poverty, 

 crowded together in unsanitary tenements with a scant 

 allowance of poor food, and breathing impure air, the 

 deteriorating effects upon both mind and body generally 

 handicap the individual for life. Undoubtedly the 

 conditions under which Kallikaks, the Jukes and other 

 notorious families have lived contributed much to the 

 deterioration of their members, but it would be a great 

 error to attribute their degradation to environment alone. 

 What an individual becomes is a product of his inheritance 

 on the one hand and his environment on the other. Where 

 either is very bad his chances of amounting to much 

 are greatly reduced; but it better to have a bad environ- 

 ment than bad inheritance, for many individuals born with 

 good stuff in them have risen to eminence, despite all 

 sorts of obstacles that surrounded them. Sanitary 

 surroundings, education and a wholesome moral atmos- 

 phere might have made passable citizens out of many of 

 the Kallikaks and Jukes, but these advantages probably 

 would not have made any of them a great discoverer or 

 President of the United States. It is with human beings 

 as it is with varieties of corn. Some kinds of corn will 

 give rise in ordinary soil to large fine ears while others 

 raised under identically the same conditions will produce 

 but a scanty yield of small ears which are poorly filled. 

 The poor scrubby variety with superior cultivation may be 

 made to give an increased yield, but no farmer would 

 think of planting it if he could get seed of the better kind. 

 Among men as among lower animals and plants it is 

 the breed that tells. But among men bad inheritance 

 tends to make bad environment, for the naturally weak 

 and incompetent and the vicious tend to associate with 

 their like and to form a social stratum where vice flourishes 

 and crime is bred. Does bad environment in turn produce 



