66 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
one or two buds to each piece ; plant them-so deep as to 
be covered with at least 4 inches of soil. Tie up all your 
flowering plants to stakes; the v/ood of the China tree, 
■when splintered out, furnishes the best and most durable 
stakes, where Cypress cannot be had. If annual flower 
seed has not been sown yet, it should be done at once. 
Recollect, that fine seeds will only need to be covered 
slightly. If covered deeply, they will not sprout. 
A liECTURE ON HEREDITARY BEOOD IN 
Man and other Mammalia ; in the 
University of Georgia. 
BY DAKIEL LEE, M.D , TERRELL PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURE. 
Gentlemen: — No branch of natural science is less 
studied, or more important than that which treats of the 
relations known to subsist between parents and offspring. 
These parental relations extend as well to all cultivated 
and other plants, as to all domesticated and other animals. 
Vitality in all its manifestations, from the humblest cellu- 
lar plants up to the most gifted philosopher, presents no 
feature more uniform and striking, no law more exacting 
and inexorable, than that which brings death to all that 
live. The total extinction of all organized beings would 
ensue at the decease of each generation, were not ample 
provision made, in the great economy of an all-wise 
Providence, for the endless transmission of life down the 
line of every species by a law no less certain, no less per- 
vading than that of death itself. 
As agricultural students, you will be expected to study 
organized matter, not only in the double capacity of being 
ever-living, and yet ever-dying in each generation, but 
in the double endowment of possible vital changes both 
in form and function, either for the better, or for the worse 
as life advances from age to age. The laws that govern 
at all times these possible changes, work out slowly but 
securely, an improvement of Blood in one direction, as a 
reward for obedience to the same, and its deterioration in 
another direction, as the natural and inevitable punish- 
ment for disobedience. It some limes happens that these 
anatomical and physiological variations from the parent 
type, are so slight as to be scarcely perceptible ; and many 
have hastily and erroneously concluded that the blood of 
all human families, and of all domesticated animals, is 
very nearly of equal purity, and of equal value. If this 
conclusion be sound, and true,] and in harmony with 
nature, it follows that there is no essential difference be- 
tween healthy and diseased blood; that the vital principle 
in a child, able only to breathe once and die, and that in 
another child whose vitality lives a century — braving the 
heat and miasm of an hundred summers, and the no less 
trying cold and humidity of as many winters — are the 
same in parental vigor, and of the same intrinsic value. 
All reasoning leading to such conclusions in reference to 
the equal purity of hereditary blood, or equal power in 
any respect, is either based on wrong data, or defective 
in logical sequence. 
Nature loves diversity, loves variety. The rays of the 
sun are not all of one color, nor of equal force summer 
and winter, spring and autumn to vivify organic nature. 
Everything is in motion ; everything changes ; and one 
cannot search long for the originals of our best pears, 
peaches, apples and other fruits; of our common wheat, 
corn, oats and other cereals; of the sheep that now yield 
us so much valuable wool ; of the cows that supply us 
with milk, butter and cheese, and not be satisfied that 
these useful plants and animals have been changed for the 
better by virtue of some law inherent in their vitality, 
which is alike favorable and available to the industry and 
knowledge of man. A little more and a little deeper in- 
vestigation leads to the conviction that man himself pos- 
sesses the capacity for progressive and indefinite improve- 
ment in a far greater degree than any other living being. 
Hence, if the bud of one pear tree is worth something 
more than the bud of another in the way of yielding fruit in 
due time, then just so far as man stands above a pear tree 
in the ascending scale of life, must the parental blood of 
one child exceed in its physical and psychological develop- 
ments the parental blood in the veins of another child. 
The antecedents of different fruit trees, and of different 
human families having been different, the vital principle 
in each assumes a modified form and character. 
The essential superiority of the hereditary blood in one 
man over that in another, consists mainly of two primary 
elements First. That of a constitutional change for the 
better, over, not merely the average of the normal con- 
dition of the race, but above that attained by the person 
whose blood is brought into comparison ; so when one’s 
moral perceptions, reasoning powers, or muscles, have 
been long cultivated, under all favorable influences, in a 
line of progenitors, the functions, whether of mind or 
body so exercised, acquire peculiar strength with the in- 
creased growth of the organs in which they naturally ex- 
ist.x You see the right arm of a blacksmith, and often both 
arms, who commenced working at his trade early, larger 
and stronger than those of his brother raised as a clerk in 
a dry goods store, or as a book-keeper ; because the in- 
fluences brought to bear on these organs have been quite 
different. Let their sons and grand-sons follow each the 
occupation of his fatther, and the peculiar anatomical 
and physiological powers developed will be more marked 
in each generation. Virtues and vices run in the blood, 
or grow on what they feed to an equal degree. Society, 
however, has the power and uses it, to modify all con- 
sanguineous tendencies, and often b)^ its examples and 
education, wholly overcomes the force of parental blood 
and instruction. A father who was never adicted to the 
use of profane language, nor his father nor grand-father, 
may, nevertheless, see his son fall into this vicious habit 
by the influence of bad examples constantly set before him. 
Society may teach him to be a gambler, a thief, or a mur- 
derer, in spite of all the restraints of virtuous hereditary 
blood, and the best efforts of his parents ; for, as it is pos- 
sible for one person to learn to be honest, so it is equally 
possible for another to learn to be dishonest. The pos- 
sibility of descending never so low in vice and crime, 
proves nothing against the practicability of leading a 
strictly moral life. Every virtuous example is worth 
much in a community, and tends to purify the blood of the 
next generation. 
The impressions made on the living organism by things 
barely seen or heard are among the most durable, when 
circumstances favor such lasting impressions. Jacob 
took the sheep, goats and cattle of Laban when they were 
ail of one uniform color, and by availing himself of a well 
known physiological law, produced young stock that was 
all ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted. Things seen, 
and acting alone on the optic nerves of parents caused this 
result. At the seige of Landau, in 1793, there were much 
cannonading and the explosion of a powder magazine, 
which kept the women in the district in a state of con- 
stant alarm. According to Baron Percey, out of 92 chil- 
dren born within a few months in the district of the can- 
nonading, 16 died as soon as born ; 33 languished 8 or 10 
months and then died; 8 became idiotic and died before 
the age of 5 years ; and two came into the world with 
numerous fractures of bones, caused by the explosinn. 
Here is an instance where 59 children were destroyed uy 
impressions made alone on the organs of hearing. Pr A. 
Combe relates a case where a healthy child was poisoned 
to death by drawing milk from its nurse while in a fif of 
violent anger. Fear, hope, disappointment, bodily pain, 
and many other purely mental, or physical forces affect 
persons of all ages, but most in the first stages of human 
