554 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 405. 



power not peculiar to the investigator, but in 

 him reaching the greatest scope and freedom 

 of action. 



The investigator must not only be born, he 

 must be permitted to grov? up. He needs 

 nourishing food, but equally needs to retain 

 the power of securing and digesting it for 

 himself. Twenty years is long enough to 

 acquire or lose any habit, and it is not strange 

 that after a youth consumed in our modern 

 and eiEcient system of kindergartens, primary, 

 grammar and high schools, colleges and uni- 

 versities, the graduate, and even the post- 

 graduate, continues to expect somebody to tell 

 him what to do next. In Germany it has 

 been found necessary to offset the goose-liver- 

 stuifing experience of the primary schools and 

 gymnasia by a return to social barbarism in 

 the university, but the self-assertion secured 

 through rowdyism and immorality is no true 

 substitute for the lost , integrity of the intel- 

 lect. The German's confidence in a highly 

 developed governmental and educational ma- 

 chinery gives him little opportunity to per- 

 ceive what is very apparent in our pioneer 

 country where a large proportion of productive 

 investigators have not suffered the disad- 

 vantage of too intensive education. Many are 

 not even college men, and of those who are 

 many come from small, poorly equipped insti- 

 tutions whose intellectual and social demands 

 did not completely monopolize the time and 

 interest of the period of intellectual growth. 

 These men did not take their colleges too 

 seriously, and did not cease to feel responsible 

 for their own intellectual salvation. Modern 

 philanthropy has reared palaces of learning in 

 which all the supposed needs of the human 

 mind are anticipated and supplied; the ques- 

 tion now is whether an endowed education has 

 not the same dangers as an endowed religion. 

 O. F. Cook. 



Washington, September 22, 1902. 



SHORTER ARTICLES. 



PREPOTENCY IN POLYDACTYLOUS CATS. 



It has long been one of the common notions 

 in post-Darwinian speculations that the varia- 

 tions which produce new species have small 

 beginnings and increase very gradually, varia- 

 tions sufficiently striking to be classed as sports 



being considered practically incapable of 

 modifying the species, since the number of 

 individuals with the same abnormality would 

 be relatively small, and the abnormal varia- 

 tion would be swamped by a few generations 

 of crossing with normal, that is, average in- 

 dividuals. This notion seems to be based on 

 the assumption that the characters of the off- 

 spring are the average of the characters of the 

 two parents — that, in other words, an abnor- 

 mality in either parent (the other being nor- 

 mal) is reduced one half in each succeeding 

 generation. 



The following observations, however, do not 

 support this view. Not only do abnormal 

 variations persist from generation to genera- 

 tion, but they even become more conspicuous, 

 although one parent is always normal. The 

 facts accord with Poulton's observations on a 

 family of polydactylous cats (Nature, 1883 and 

 1887). 



Some weeks ago my attention was called to 

 three generations of cats in the possession of a 

 Los Angeles family, many of the cats being 

 furnished with an abnormal number of toes 

 on both manus and pes. All are descended 

 from a stray female of unknown pedigree, 

 which possessed twenty-two toes, six (instead 

 of five) on each manus, and five (instead of 

 four) on each iDes. This female, crossing with 

 normal males, has produced several litters. In 

 one litter there were five kittens, four of which 

 were normal, the other having the normal 

 number of five toes on each manus, but not 

 the normal arrangement, the hallux being on 

 a line with the others and equalling them in 

 size. Each pes had six toes- The phalanges 

 were apparently well formed, the same number 

 to every toe. 



Another litter contained several abnormal 

 kittens (no accurate account was kept of the 

 ratio of normal to abnormal), one of which 

 survives and has been examined by me, as 

 have all the other abnormal cats to be men- 

 tioned. It has six toes on the right manus, 

 seven on the left manus, and the normal num- 

 ber, fourj on each pes. Such a condition may 

 be represented in the following manner: 



_Z_jA 



4 4 



