12 THE FEEBLY INHIBITED. 



3. THE WANDERING INSTINCT IN CHILDREN. 



The tendency to run away is extraordinarily common among young 

 children. We have the testimony of G. Stanley Hall (1904, II, p. 376) 

 that, since settled life is a recent development, "children, true to their 

 function of revealing the past, sometimes almost as soon as they have 

 acquired the upright method of locomotion, as if intoxicated by 'out- 

 of-doors,' start off and, by some inner impulse, go on and on with no 

 idea of where or why, tempted by an open gate or by the instinct to 

 follow a man or vehicle, or as a just-hatched chick follows any moving 

 thing." Kline (1898, p. 58), who has carefully collected data on this 

 subject, finds a maxim of runaways for the first decade of life at 5 years 

 and a high frequency at 3 years, and he states that all children that run 

 off from i to 3 do so impulsively. 



4. WANDERING IN ADOLESCENTS. 



At the adolescent period, when instincts are most highly developed, 

 a strong impulse to migrate or wander is again shown. In Kline's ( 1 898) 

 collection of 501 runaways the greatest number (52 cases) occurred at 

 the age of 15 years, with high numbers at 13 and 14 years. In the wan- 

 derings of this period a "love of adventure " is the reason oftenest given. 

 But this is only the individual's interpretation of the unrecognized first 

 call of the mating instinct. 



IV. THE FAMILY HISTORY OF NOMADS: IMPORTANCE, SOURCES, AND 



CLASSIFICATION. 



Admitting the universality in man of the fundamental wandering 

 instinct, we have still to explain the variety of its forms, and particu- 

 larly its frequent association with various psychoses. It is in the con- 

 viction that nomadism in man is a racial character that we turn to a 

 study of family histories. Such histories will reveal, first, the manner 

 of inheritance of the nomadic behavior in adult men and women of 

 modern America, and secondly, the meaning of the association of the 

 nomadic tendency with various psychoses. 



The family histories that are deposited at the Eugenics Record Office 

 afford a fair number of cases of nomadism in one of its protean forms. 

 These histories are given in extenso here in order that the critical reader 

 may judge of the value of the evidence upon which the conclusions of 

 this paper are based. All histories are given ; there has been rejection 

 of none. It is to be noted that in nearly a third of the cases there is 

 no knowledge of the parents, i. e., the history is fragmentary. These 

 cases are included because the personal history is not unimportant 

 and the traits with which it is associated in different members of the 

 principal fraternity are of great interest. In these histories some of 

 the words used by the recorder, which refer to nomadism, are given in 

 italics. Occasionally italics are used to call attention to periodic 



