Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/186

174 from their parents. Man, on the other hand, inherits the culture of ages and gathers and conserves the wisdom of successive generations, and may thus profit by every advance of the race, and, in turn, aid in perfecting it more and more."

This assertion has been repeated by scientists of the old school as though it were an axiom of natural history, instead of an arrogant anthropocentric assumption refuted by scores of well-authenticated facts. The whole process of domestication, which is to the lower animals what civilization is to man, and the possibility of producing and propagating desirable qualities in the race, run counter to Buffon's theory. The value of a horse's pedigree depends upon the transmissibility of distinctive characteristics which were originally peculiar to some individual horse, idiosyncrasies which commended themselves to man as worthy of preservation, or such as in the natural struggle for existence would assert and propagate themselves.

If the descendants of blood-horses do not inherit the individual training of their sires, neither are the children of scholars or musicians born with a knowledge of books or the ability to play on musical instruments. What is inherited in both cases is some particular disposition or endowment, a superior aptitude for the things in which their progenitors excelled. Indeed, this heritage is handed down in horses with surer and steadier increase, or, at least, with smaller loss and depreciation than in human beings, since they are mated with sole reference to this result; and there is no room left for the play of personal fancy and caprice, or for social, sentimental, or pecuniary considerations, which exert a baneful influence upon marriage from a physiological point of view, and contribute to the deterioration of the race. This is strikingly perceptible in some portions of Europe, where the struggle for existence, and especially for high social position, is exceedingly intense, and a large dower suffices to cover up all mental and physical deficiencies in the bride.

The scientific swine-breeder keeps genealogical tables of his pigs, and is as jealous of any taint in a pure porcine strain as any prince of the blood is of plebeian contamination. In both cases the vitiation bars succession, the one condition of which is purity of lineage. It is by the selection not only of the finest stock, but also of the choicest individuals for breeding, that animals are "progressively improved" both bodily and intellectually. This is, perhaps, most clearly observable in hunting-dogs and race-horses, which have undergone quite remarkable modifications within the present century owing to the extraordinary pains taken to develop and perfect their peculiar characteristics. In some instances unusual births or freaks of nature are preserved, and by persistently propagating themselves form the starting