162 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
sensations. Just as the individual who has passed 
the middle period of life, or attained to old age, has 
outlived many conditions of mind and body so 
different and distinct that when recalled they seem 
to represent separate identities, and yet has pre- 
served within himself something of them all—of 
adolescence, of boyhood, even of childhood and 
infancy—an ineradicable something corresponding 
to the image, bright or dim, existing in his memory; 
so do we inherit and retain something of our for- 
gotten progenitors, the old emotions and obsolete 
modes of thought of races that have preceded us 
by centuries and by thousands of years. 
In the next chapter, dealing with the subject of | 
man’s irrational enmity to the serpent, there will 
be more said on this subject; nevertheless, at the 
risk of some overlapping, I must in this place dwell 
a little on my own early experiences, which serve 
to illustrate the familiar biological doctrine that 
the ancient, outlived characters of the organism tend 
to reappear for a season in its young. The mental 
stripes on the human whelp are very perceptible. 
From an aesthetic, that is, owr aesthetic, point of 
view, there is not much to choose between an 
English infant, whether of aristocratic or plebeian 
descent, and a Maori, Patagonian, Japanese, or 
Greenland infant. The Greenland infant might be 
the fattest—I do not know. After the features 
and expression change, when infancy and early 
childhood is past, they are still alike in mind. The 
similarity of all children all the world over some- 
