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, our 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- 



