THE HEREDITY OF RICHARD ROE. 135 
are products of self-deception or plain lying.* Probably 
the period of gestation is too short for peculiar nervous 
states to produce far-reaching changes in hereditary en- 
dowments. On the other hand, doubt and ridicule are 
not argument, and there may be some reality in influ- 
ences in which the world has so long believed; but these 
phenomena, if existing, belong to the realm of abnormal 
nerve action or of altered nutrition, not to heredity. 
The value of the prenatal influences acting upon 
Richard Roe we may indicate as Z, giving the symbol 
an indefinite and, if you please, a low value. But this 
is not the whole story. There are many phenomena of 
transmitted qualities that can not be charged to hered- 
ity. Just as a sound mind demands a 
PramsmussIGH sound body, so does a sound child de- 
of impaired ee 
vitality. mand a sound mother. Bad nutrition 
before as well as after birth may neu- 
tralize the most vigorous inheritance within the germ 
cell. A child well conceived may yet be stunted in de- 
velopment. Even the father may transmit weakness 
in development as a handicap to hereditary strength. 
The many physical vicissitudes between conception and 
birth may determine the rate of early growth or the im- 
petus of early development. In a sense, the impulse of 
* For example, Dr. Fearn cites the following case: **A mother 
witnessed the removal of one of the bones (metacarpal) from her 
husband’s hand which greatly shocked and alarmed her. A short 
time after she had a child who was born without the correspond- 
ing bone which was removed from the father.” (Report of Med- 
ical Association of Alabama, 1850, as quoted by Dr. S. B. Elliott 
in the Arena, March, 1894.) If this report is true, our ideas of 
the formation and dissolution of parts of the skeleton must be 
materially changed. We must believe either that the metacarpal 
bones are formed just before birth, after all the rest of the skele- 
ton, or else that bones once formed may be reabsorbed under the 
influence of nervous shock or hysteria. Either view is nonsense. 
