HEREDITY 167 



facts on which the theory is based are inadequate or unproved, 

 and it is probable that the phenomena called telegony have no 

 real existence. 



Equally uncertain are the phenomena known as "prenatal 

 influences.'' In the process of evolution, the development of the 

 female has brought her to be more and more the protector and 

 helper of the young. She gives to her progeny not only her 

 share of its heredity, but she becomes more and more a factor in 

 its development. In the mammalia the little egg is retained 

 long in the body and fed, not with food yolk, but with the 

 mother's blood. The parent thus becomes an immediate and 

 most important part of the environment of the young. In man, 

 by the growth of the family the parental environment becomes 

 a lifelong influence. The father as well as the mother becomes a 

 part of it. 



It has long been a matter of common belief that among 

 mammals a special additional formative influence is exerted by 

 the mother in the period between conception and birth. The 

 patriarch Jacob is recorded as having made a thrifty use of this 

 influence in relation to the herds of his father-in-law, Laban. 

 This belief is part of the folklore of almost every race of intelli- 

 gent men. In the translations of Carmen Silva, that gentle 

 woman whom kind nature made a poet and cruel fortune a 

 queen, we find these words of a Roumanian peasant woman: 



"My little child is lying in the grass, 

 His face is covered with the blades of grass. 

 While I did bear the child, I ever watched 

 The reaper work, that it might love the harvests; 

 And when the boy was born, the meadow said, 

 ' This is my child.'" 



In the current literature of hysterical ethics we find all sorts 

 of exhortations to mothers to do this and not to do that, to 

 cherish this and avoid that on account of its supposed effect 

 on the coming progeny. Long lists of cases have been reported 

 illustrating the law of prenatal influence. Most of these records 

 serve only to induce scepticism. Many of these are mere co- 

 incidences, some are unverifiable, others grossly impossible. 

 There is an evident desire to make a case rather than to tell the 

 truth. The whole matter is much in need of serious study, and 



