PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 35 
evil: far from it. A population like our own, indeed, owes much of 
its strength to the extreme diversity of its components, for they con- 
tribute a corresponding abundance of aptitudes. Everything turns on 
the nature of the ingredients brought in, and I am concerned solely 
with the observation that these genetic disturbances lead ultimately 
to great and usually unforeseen changes in the nature of the population. 
Some experiments of this kind are going on at the present time, 
in the United States, for example, on a very large scale. Our grand- 
children may live to see the characteristics of the American population 
entirely altered by the vast invasion of Italian and other South 
Buropean elements. We may expect that the Eastern States, and 
especially New England, whose people still exhibit the fine Puritan 
_ qualities with their appropriate limitations, absorbing little of the 
alien elements, will before long be in feelings and aptitudes very notably 
differentiated from the rest. In J apan, also, with the abolition of the 
feudal system and the rise of commercialism, a change in population 
has begun which may be worthy of the attention of naturalists in that 
country. Tull the revolution the Samurai almost always married within 
their own class, with the result, as I am informed, that the caste had 
fairly recognisable features. The changes of 1868 and the consequent 
impoverishment of the Samurai have brought about a beginning of 
disintegration which may not improbably have perceptible effects. 
How many genetic vicissitudes has our own peerage undergone! 
Into the hard-fighting stock of medisval and Plantagenet times have 
successively been crossed the cunning shrewdness of Tudor states- 
men and courtiers, the numerous contributions of Charles IT. and 
his concubines, reinforcing peculiar and persistent attributes which 
popular imagination especially regards as the characteristic of peers, 
ultimately the heroes of finance and industrialism. Definitely intellec- 
tual elements have been sporadically added, with rare exceptions, 
however, from the ranks of lawyers and politicians. To this 
aristocracy art, learning, and science have contributed sparse in- 
gredients, but these mostly chosen for celibacy or childlessness. A 
remarkable body of men, nevertheless; with an average ‘ horse-power,’ 
as Samuel Butler would have said, far exceeding that of any random 
sample of the middle-class. If only man could be reproduced by 
budding what a simplification it would be! In vegetative reproduction 
heredity is usually complete. The Washington plum can be divided 
to produce as many identical individuals as are required. If, Bay, 
Washington, the statesman, or preferably King Solomon, could 
similarly have been propagated, all the nations of the earth could 
have been supplied with ideal rulers. 
Historians commonly ascribe such changes as occurred in Athens, 
and will almost certainly come to pass in the United States, to 
D2 
