NURTURE AND NATURE 39 



Now I do not intend to argue for a moment that the Edinburgh 

 data provide the final word in these matters, but they form the first 

 solid attempt to provide information as to the influence of home 

 environment. Neither the school medical officer nor, as a rule, the 

 teacher can follow the children into their homes. All that has hitherto 

 been done has been more or less plausible guesswork as to the relation 

 of home environment to the health and intelligence of the child. I 

 shall not be surprised to find, when further data are available, that the 

 nation has for years been putting its money on "Environment" when 

 "Heredity" wins in a canter. To say this is not to discourage all 

 attempts to better defective sight in the schools or to check the 

 intensification of myopia. But it would be foolish — in face of our 

 increasing degeneracy — to neglect the possibility that only other 

 methods can in the long run hinder the spread of defects. Better 

 qualities, such as keen and strong vision, are no longer an absolute 

 requisite for survival, and defectiveness, instead of meeting the stern 

 judgment of Nature, is by governmental and charitable agencies 

 supported to multiply its kind. The curative art in its tenderness for 

 the individual may be disastrous for the race, unless it realizes fully 

 the relative biological importance of heredity and environment. 



APPENDIX B. 



CLEANLINESS AND VISION. 



Through the courtesy of Dr F. E. Rock, School Medical Officer 

 of the Edmonton Education Committee, I have received data con- 

 necting the age, acuity of vision, and cleanliness of body and clothing 

 of 953 Edmonton children. Statistically the data are somewhat erratic 

 as there has been an age selection in testing the eyesight and clearly 

 home environment, if we are to measure that by cleanliness of body 

 and clothing, also produces an age selection. Dr Rock, as many 

 another medical officer, not unnaturally, takes this cleanliness as the 

 only measure available of home environment. Remembering what 

 children are and will do, I must submit that it can never replace 

 actually study of the homes and the parents. Taking it, however, as 



