Mabch 5, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



339 



a thing. And yet this precious human kind 

 of ours, whose progress is so fateful to the 

 world, goes its blind way, like any jelly- 

 fish, mates almost at random and then, 

 after two or three generations, has lost all 

 knowledge of the matings that have gone 

 before. Of course, the race has got along, 

 somehow, just as the lower animals get 

 along; although we have been burdened 

 with an intelligence sufficient to lead us to 

 interfere with the operation of pure instinct 

 but not sufficient always to interfere wisely. 

 There are those who urge that the matter 

 of marriage selection should be left to in- 

 stinct; forgetting that in adult man (with 

 his enormous development of the inhibi- 

 tions) instinct has been so repressed as to 

 have become a very unsafe guide. There 

 are those who adhere to the obviously false 

 doctrine that men are born equal and 

 therefore it really doesn't matter who 

 marries whom. It is, however, easy to show 

 that it does matter tremendously. Also I 

 think it quite within the range of possibil- 

 ities that it wiU become incorporated into 

 the mores that persons who are .thinking 

 of marrying should learn something about 

 the genealogical history of the proposed 

 parents of their children. And, again, it 

 is highly probable that, after we have 

 learned the method of inheritance of racial 

 traits and can state the consequences (cer- 

 tain or probable) of particular matings, 

 that such precise knowledge will influence 

 human conduct even as a knowledge of the 

 causes of yellow fever has influenced human 

 conduct and has led to a vast reduction in 

 the morbidity from that disease. When our 

 knowledge of the inheritance of racial char- 

 acteristics becomes fairly complete and 

 widely diffused it can not be doubted that 

 such knowledge will influence many selec- 

 tions of mates. 



The fact that the nature of the mating 

 does influence the progeny is well brought 



out by the study of half fraternities, both 

 those in which the father and those in which 

 the mother is the common parent. The 

 economic and other environmental condi- 

 tions are as similar as possible; the differ- 

 ence in the progeny is therefore the more 

 readily ascribed to the difference in blood. 

 I have collected many of these cases of 

 double matings ; and one of them may serve 

 us now as an illustration. 



A man whom we may call John WoUey, 

 born 1668, son of a merchant and his wife 

 (sister of the first rector of Yale College), 

 graduated from Harvard College, entered 

 the ministry and finally settled in a church 

 in southeastern Connecticut. He had no 

 brother who survived infancy, but three 

 sisters who married well. This John mar- 

 ried twice. His first marriage was to ai 

 widow, Martha nee Silver. About the- 

 Silvers of that day I can learn little; they 

 were apparently quiet, steady folk who took 

 no very active part in the affairs of the com- 

 munity. Martha is described in the town 

 minutes as "that eminently pious and very 

 virtuous matron. ' ' This couple had 7 chil- 

 dren of whom one died at 9 years, leaving 

 6 — 4 girls and 2 boys — to grow up. Of the 

 younger son we know only that he was 

 born, married and died, having held the 

 office of deacon. The other brother, at his 

 father's death, removed to a farm five miles 

 back from the village which his father had 

 received as a testimony of regard from the 

 town. In his wiU the father asked the son 

 to improve the farm (about 500 acres) thus 

 left him. The son lived on the farm, mar- 

 ried a woman of no outstanding name, with 

 23 others founded a church near by, and 

 died at the age of 44 years, leaving 14 chil- 

 dren, of whom the eldest was not yet 19. 

 Of these 14 children, 9 were sons and ap- 

 parently none died in infancy but of all 

 the nine sons there is nothing of importance 

 to note of any except birth, marriage and 



