SOCIAL HEREDITY 288 



clearly in relation to their bearing upon the subject 

 of social heredity in human society. 



One of the species of wild animals with wh'ch a 

 considerable series of my experiments was con- 

 cerned was the wild duck. There is probably no 

 creature which has been more universally hunted by 

 man from pr meval times than the wild duck. 

 The adult bird is one of the shyest of creatures In 

 alertness and craftiness in her nesting habits, in 

 the tricks and stratagems for avoiding pursuit 

 which both the parent and the young have developed, 

 this ancestor of our breed of domestic ducks has 

 few equals in the wild. It breeds plentifully in 

 remote places, usually near water, throughout 

 northern Europe, and in all my experiments eggs 

 or newly hatched young were taken from the nests 

 of the wild birds in their native haunts. In all the 

 experiments I found no evidence that some of the 

 most characteristic habits of the wild duck were the 

 result of inborn heredity developed by natural 

 selection. On the contrary, the experiments 

 furnished evidence from which it was impossible 

 to avoid the conclusion that the habits were trans- 

 mitted by social inheritance imposed on the young 

 mainly under conditions of strong emotion. 



The record of a single example will exhibit the 

 meaning that was found to be inherent in a great 



