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THE NEXT
GENERATION

FRANCES GULICKJEWET

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THE NEXT GENERATION

A STUDY IN THE PHYSIOLOGY
OF INHERITANCE

FRANCES GULICK JEWETT

AUTHOR OF THE FOLLOWING BOOKS OF THE GULICK HYGIENE SERIES

"GOOD HEALTH," "TOWN AND CITY," "THE BODY AT WORK,"
"THE BODY AND ITS DEFENSES," AND "CONTROL OF BODY AND MIND"

GINN AND COMPANY

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON

JEbe athenaeum

GINN AND COMPANY • PRO-
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A.

TO
BOYS AND GIRLS

THE GUARDIANS
OF THE NEXT GENERATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

In offering this small volume to those who may read it
the author wishes to express her own indebtedness, not alone
to the men and to the women whose books have supplied
her with facts and with inspiration, but also to relatives
and personal friends who have shared in her work as coun-
selors, and to authorities of distinguished attainment who
have given the manuscript careful reading. Among these
should be mentioned Professor Irving Fisher of Yale Uni-
versity, Professor W. L. Tower and Professor G. H. Mead of
The University of Chicago, Professor Thomas M. Balliet
of New York University, Dr. Luther H. Gulick of New
York City, and Professor Adolf Meyer of the Johns Hopkins
University.

Acknowledgment is also made to authors and to publishers
through whose kindness many of the illustrations of this book
have become possible ; also to Mr. Victor David Brenner for
permission to represent on the cover his medallion, " The
Successors to the Fates." Having been designed for the
Fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demog-
raphy, this emblem most appropriately shows that " the distaff
from which is spun the thread of life is held to-day by the
forces of modern hygiene."

FRANCES GULICK JEWETT

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER

I. FATHERS, MOTHERS, AND CHILDREN i

II. ANDALUSIAN FOWLS 7

III. WHEN CHARACTERS ARE COMBINED 12

IV. MENDEL AND HIS GARDEN PEAS 20

V. LAWS OF INHERITANCE PUT TO USE ...... 26

VI. EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE 34

VII. A FEW OF DARWIN'S FACTS 43

VIII. DARWIN'S PROBLEM 49

IX. FIVE LINKS TO THE CHAIN 56

X. EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 64

XL ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND MUTATIONS .... 72

XII. ISOLATION, OR LAND SHELLS ON HAWAII .... 81

XIII. CHANGED ENVIRONMENT FOR LEPTINOTARSA ... 88

XIV. NEW SPECIES THROUGH CHANGED ENVIRONMENT . 95
XV. BEGINNINGS OF THE NEXT GENERATION .... 100

XVI. THE MARVEL OF GROWTH no

XVII. GERM CELLS DAMAGED BY ALCOHOL 118

XVIII. FROM FOURTEEN TO TWENTY 126

XIX. NICOTINE AND ADOLESCENCE . 136

XX. ALCOHOL AS A BEVERAGE 145

XXI. THE CROWN OF EVOLUTION 153

XXII. FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY 162

XXIII. PROTECT THE STREAM OF LIFE 165

42522

viii THE NEXT GENERATION

CHAPTER PAGE

XXIV. PREVENTION OF BLINDNESS 173

XXV. SAFETY FROM FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS 181

XXVI. OVERWORK FOR CHILDREN ONE HUNDRED YEARS

AGO AND Now 189

XXVII. THREE STEPS IN RACE IMPROVEMENT . ' . . . . 196

XXVIII. THE FINAL STEP, OR RACE REGENERATION . . . 201

QUESTIONS 205

A PARTIAL LIST OF BOOKS USED IN THE PREPARA-
TION OF THIS VOLUME 229

INDEX 231

INTRODUCTION

In the days of myths in ancient Greece men talked about
three Fates who were sisters. And in Rome an artist1
painted these sis-
ters as they were
supposed to be—
three old women
in a group, con-
trolling the des-
tiny of every
human being.

As they stand
together in the pic-
ture they neither
weep nor smile ;
they show neither
joy nor sorrow,
neither hope nor
despair. Each is
working, watch-
ing, waiting.

Clotho is the

youngest sister. THE THREE FATES

She holds the

distaff which carries the thread of life. This thread begins to

lengthen when the baby is born. Lachesis, the second sister,

1 Supposed to have been Michelangelo.

x THE NEXT GENERATION

spins out the thread as the years go by ; and Atropos, the
third sister Fate, stands by with huge shears. She is the
oldest, the most haggard, the most cruel of them all, and she
threatens the thread from the moment the spinning begins
until she decides to cut it.

Sometimes she clips her shears together and cuts when
the thread has lengthened no more than a hand's breadth.
This means that the baby dies very young. Sometimes the
thread grows longer and longer, until yards of it have been
spun off by Lachesis. This means that, although Atropos
continued to threaten with her shears, she did not actually
bring them together until years had passed and the baby had
grown to be a man.

The teaching of the picture of the myth is that human
beings of every age, in every generation, are but the play-
things of the Fates — that life is longer or shorter as the
Fates decide, and that no act of man can change either his
own destiny or that of his descendants.

Here, then, is the difference between ancient myth and
modern science. Nowadays science declares that man is by
no means altogether helpless concerning his own future — that
only the fool believes he cannot help himself. And, laden
with facts to prove each point, science goes on to show how
man may shorten his life or lengthen it, how he may bless
his life or curse it, how he may make his life or mar it, by
what he knows and by the way he puts his knowledge to use.

Science does not stop even here, but, with proofs in hand,
shows that the destiny of future generations lies in the hands
of the men and the women, the boys and the girls, who are
alive to-day.

This book deals with the same absorbing topic. It tries to
show how it is that science has crippled those ancient Fates,

INTRODUCTION xi

and why it is that a man who understands the laws of growth
and of inheritance may, in a very real way, drive the crippled
Fates from the field and help shape the future of the race.

Some one has suggested that the three Fates of modern
life are

1 . Heredity — what we receive from our ancestors by the
road of inheritance.

2. Environment — all that surrounds us and influences us
from the cradle to the grave.

3 . Personal development — what we make of ourselves
during life.

The analogy is not altogether perfect, but the following
pages take each of these modern Fates into account.

To understand inheritance we must follow life from pre-
historic ages until now. From small beginnings we must trace
large results — must learn how it is and why it is that all life
on the earth is joined as a unit, and must know how life is
passed on from generation to generation.

We must even study 'life cells in their development, and
watch them as they grow from stage to stage, until at last
they become well-developed beings.

In other words, we must learn so many facts about life itself
and about what controls it, that we shall be better prepared to
face our own lives and the lives of future generations.

Science says human beings will be safer when people
know the facts and are influenced by them. Teachers say,
" Give us the facts and we will pass them on to the boys
and the girls whom we teach." Both scientist and teacher
agree that the human race will be better able to escape
certain kinds of peril if we let young people know what the
perils are and how to avoid them.

Such is the purpose of this book.

Hitherto the development of our race has been uncon-
scious, and we have been allowed no responsibility for its
right course. Now, in the fullness of time, we are treated
as children no more, and the conscious fashioning of the
human race is given into our hands. Let us put away childish
things, stand up with open eyes, and face our responsibilities.

WHETHAM

THE NEXT GENERATION

CHAPTER I
FATHERS, MOTHERS, AND CHILDREN

At our county fair recently the animal that drew the
crowd and won the prize was a huge Poland-China pig.
He weighed twelve hundred pounds, measured seven full feet
in length, was coal black with white feet and a white face,
and had ears that flapped low. He had a turned-up nose, a
curled-up tail, legs barely long enough to hold his body from
the ground, and he cost exactly three thousand dollars.

" But why did you pay so much ? " we asked the owner.

" For three reasons," he said.

1. " The pig has a fine line of ancestors.

2. " He shows it in every part of his body.

3. "His descendants are sure to be like him and to bring
fancy prices."

From this man's point of view it was indeed clear that for
the sake of the next generation even pigs must have the
right sort of ancestors.

And what about human beings, we wondered — the people
next door, and the rest of us ? Does the law apply to us all ?
We thought them over, one by one, — neighbors to the north
and to the south, to the east and to the west of us, — men,
women, and children who are set apart in families, with each
family quite different from all the others.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Yet we knew that if a student of the laws of inheritance
should come to town, and if he should hear certain definite
facts about the ancestors of these neighbors, even without a
glance at the men and the women themselves, or at their
children, he would be able to go from door to door and nail
on most of them a few definite statements about the children

in the house.

One label might read :
" Every child here has
light hair and blue
eyes." Another : " Every
child in this family has
dark hair and dark
eyes." Another : " Most
of the children unusually
bright." Still another :
" Children dark-skinned
with curly hair."

And then if the same
student should go to the
small house around the
corner, and should know
what the parents and the grandparents of the children have
been, the paper nailed to the door would read : " Every child
in this family is either idiotic or feeble-minded."

It is true that in many cases even the closest students of
inheritance would not be able to make definite statements
about color of hair, eyes, etc. Nevertheless, when all the doors
had been labeled, those who read the statements would see
that most of them told the truth about the children.

Later chapters will show how it comes about that men are
able to speak so positively about persons whom they have

JONATHAN EDWARDS

FATHERS, MOTHERS, AND CHILDREN 3

never seen. We know this is done. Perhaps, however, we
hardly appreciate the tremendous power of the laws which
tie the generations together.

Take, for example, the record of the family of Jonathan
Edwards. He himself was born in 1703. He was noted for
his strength of character, for his mental power, and for his
fearless loyalty to duty.

Such was the character stamp which he had when he began
to be an ancestor. As to whether or not his own character
made any difference with the character of his descendants,
nothing but facts will show, and here are some of them.1 In
1900, of the descendants of Jonathan Edwards, 1 394 had been
located, and the occupations of many were ascertained. The
following facts are quoted.

College presidents 13

College professors 65

Doctors 60

Clergymen, missionaries, etc. . . 100

Officers in the army and navy 75

Eminent authors and writers 60

Lawyers over 100

Judges 30

Holders of public offices, one being Vice President of

the United States 80

United States senators 3

Managers of railroads, banks, insurance companies, etc. 1 5

College graduates 295

Several were governors and holders of important state

offices.

The claim is also made that " almost if not every depart-
ment of social progress and of public weal has felt
the impulse of this healthy and long-lived family."

1 Taken from Mr. Winship's account of the descendants of Jonathan
Edwards.

4 THE NEXT GENERATION

The following statement touches another point. "It is not
known that any one of them was ever convicted of crime."

Such, then, is the well-authenticated record of a single
family, living in the United States of America. Clearly
enough, the world is better off because Jonathan Edwards
became an ancestor.

Take another American family, with another kind of fame.
The "Jukes family"1 it is called. The first discovered an-
cestor of this group was a shiftless fisherman born in New
York state in 1720. He had five daughters, and in the five
generations since then the family has numbered 1200 per-
sons. This includes 200 outsiders who have married into the
family. Follow the occupations of some of these people.
The facts are quoted from the printed record.

Convicted criminals 130

Habitual thieves 60

Murderers 7

Wrecked by diseased wickedness 440

Immoral women fully one half

Professional paupers 310

Trades learned by twenty. Ten of these learned the
trade in prison.

Think also of this other fact which the report brings out :
During the years of their lives not paupers alone but also
those who had committed robbery and murder and broken
every law of decency had to be supported at public expense.
That is to say, law-abiding and efficient citizens — those who
stayed out of prison and out of the workhouse, those who
worked hard with honest purpose to support themselves —
had to pay taxes for the support of these lawless and in-
efficient people who spent their days in prison and in the
workhouse.

1 Not the real family name.

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(From « Statistical Atlas," Twelfth Census of the United States)

6 THE NEXT GENERATION

It is estimated that already this single family of Jukes
has cost the state of New York over $1,250,000; and the
expense still goes on, for each generation of descendants
continues to be what its ancestors were.

In the United States as a whole those of us who are able-
bodied, clear-headed, and diligent are taxed over $100,000,-
ooo each year for the support of criminals, paupers, the
insane, the feeble-minded, and the diseased. This does not
include the enormous sums paid out by ourselves in private
charities. More serious still, thousands of those who were
cursed from birth by the quality of their ancestors and by the
surroundings in which they grew up are themselves now a
curse to their descendants and to the communities in which
they live.

No wonder, then, that the relation of cause to effect in life
is being studied now as never before in the history of the
world. The truth is that there was never such an array of
facts to show what the trouble is and how to escape it.

Examine the chart which shows the rate of increase in
national populations. Notice what is happening in the dif-
ferent countries of the world. See how the millions of the
inhabitants piled themselves up between the years 1800 and
1900. Imagine this rate of increase as it goes on for the
next hundred years ; then think of the difference it will make
in the outcome of things whether one kind of family or the
other kind multiplies faster on the earth.

The next few chapters give facts which show what the laws
of inheritance are — laws which apply not only to poultry and
to guinea pigs but to all living creatures, including man.

CHAPTER II

ANDALUSIAN FOWLS

Selected eggs were in the incubator, and the men who
owned them waited to see what the chicks would look like.
It seems there are two distinct kinds of Andalusian fowls,
— one pure-bred black, the
other pure-bred white with
dashes of black here and
there, — and the owners had
selected one bird from each
group to be parents of the
next generation of chicks.

The question was whether
these chicks would be black
like one parent or white like
the other parent, or whether
they would show a mixture
of the two colors. BLUE ANDALUSIAN PuLLET

The chickens come in three colors : blue,

black, and white ; the larger number

being blue

The answer came after the
little creatures were hatched.
Not a black one or a white
one appeared among them ; each was a queer mixture of
black and white which is technically called blue.

Was this an accident, the breeders wondered, or would the
same thing happen over again if other Andalusian parents
were chosen ? So they made another test. In the first ex-
periment the father was black, the mother white. Now they

THE NEXT GENERATION

changed the order. They chose a pure-bred white father and
a pure-bred black mother. Again they waited for results,
and again the chicks told the same story. Not a black one
or a white one was among them ; all were as blue as the
first group.

From then until now the same experiment has always
produced the same result. Whenever a black Andalusian

fowl and a white Anda-
lusian fowl have become
parents, their chicks in the
first generation have always
grown up to be blue Anda-
lusian fowls. They are a
mixture and not pure-bred
like their parents. Such a
mixture is always called
hybrid. Remember this
word and its meaning. It
is the opposite of pure-bred.
All animals are hybrid un-
less both parents are pure-
bred of the same kind.

The next step in this
investigation was to gather
facts about the descendants of the hybrids. Would they be
blue like their parents or black like one grandparent or white
like the other grandparent ?

In making this experiment two blue ones were chosen as
ancestors.

The illustration shows what happened in the next genera-
tion. One chick was white like one grandparent ; one was black
like the other grandparent; two were blue like their parents.

BLUE ANDALUSIAN "COCK

ANDALUSIAN FOWLS 9

Follow the illustration on the next page and see what came
to pass when the different members of that mixed group of
chicks became ancestors.

The black one was mated with a black one from another
family — not shown in the picture. Eggs were laid. These
hatched out in proper fashion, and behold, every chick of the
next generation was as black as its parents ; not one was blue
like its grandparents.

The white one was also mated with another white one from
another family, and here the chicks in the next generation
were all as white as their parents, with not a blue one among
them to remind themselves of their blue grandparents.

But when the blue ones were mated with others like them-
selves, their children turned out precisely as did the children
of the hybrids of the previous generation. That is, out of
every four, one chick was black, one was white, and two
were blue.

These experiments have been repeated over and over
again in different parts of the world, and the results are
always the same. Stated concisely, they are as follows :

1 . When a pure-bred black Andalusian fowl is mated with
a pure-bred black, all the descendants are pure-bred black ;
and so long as black is mated with black, no white one and
no blue one will ever appear in any generation of the family.

2. When a pure-bred white Andalusian fowl is mated with
a pure-bred white, all the descendants are white ; and if white
continues to be mated with white, no black one and no blue
one will ever appear in later generations of the family.

3. When a pure-bred white is mated with a pure-bred black,
not a member of the next generation will be pure-bred ; not
one will be either black or white ; each will be a hybrid and
each will be blue.

THE NEXT GENERATION

4. When a blue Andalusian fowl is mated with another blue
hybrid like itself, one quarter of the offspring will be white,
another quarter will be black, while the remaining half will
be hybrid and will show it by being blue.1

COLOR INHERITANCE IN ANDALUSIAN FOWLS

Follow the descendants of the first two and notice what occurs in successive genera-
tions when a pure-bred black Andalusian fowl and a pure-bred white Andalusian fowl
become ancestors. In studying the illustration remember that, in the second genera-
tion of offspring, the black one and the white one are mated with pure-breds like
themselves, which are not shown in the drawing

With Andalusian fowls these laws of color inheritance
never vary. They can always be depended upon. They con-
tinue from generation to generation, and by knowing who the

1 The number of individuals in the diagram for each generation does not
mean that there are always just so many chicks in each family. Instead, the
number is chosen for no other purpose than to show the proportion of
black and white and blue that comes in each generation of descendants
when a black Andalusian fowl is mated with a white Andalusian fowl.
Moreover, it is not meant that every family of four has one white, one
black, and two blue chicks, but only that this is true on the average.
There is just one chance in four that an egg will hatch out a white chick,
one chance in four that the chick will be black, and one chance in two
that it will be blue.

ANDALUSIAN FOWLS II

Andalusian ancestors are one can always tell what the color
of the descendants will be.

But inheritance is not always such an easy affair to follow.
On the contrary, Andalusian fowls simply help us by showing
what the laws are in their simplest form. We shall soon see
that these same laws are in control even when inheritance
seems nothing more than a tangled skein of chances. Take
the guinea pig, for example. Here combinations occur which
would be pretty hard to understand if it were not for Andalusian
fowls. The next chapter deals with these guinea pigs.

CHAPTER III

WHEN CHARACTERS1 ARE COMBINED

Between 1900 and 1905 about three thousand guinea pigs
and several hundred rabbits were reared and housed and
studied in the Zoological Laboratory of Harvard University.
Professor Castle kept them in this laboratory of living crea-
tures for the sake of seeing what he could do for descendants
when he himself chose ancestors for them.

His main work was with guinea pigs, and he chose them
because they are small, because they do not eat much, do not
take up much room, are easily cared for, and multiply fast.

Perhaps the last reason was really the most important of
all. The truth is, small animals have so short a time from one
generation to the next — that is, from parent to child — that
it is easy to trace resemblances between far-away ancestors
and present-day descendants.2

Rabbits have a new generation every eight months, and
guinea pigs multiply at the rate of four generations a year.
This means that guinea pigs can have children, grandchildren,
great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren all within
the same year. Thus guinea pigs are particularly well fitted
to serve as helpers in answering questions about inheritance,
for within a very few years the descendants show just what
their long lines of ancestors have done for them.

In size these animals are about as large as well-developed
rats. But instead of being all of one color, as are rats, the

1 As used in books of this kind the word character means " characteristic."

2 All children of the same parent belong to the same generation.

WHEN CHARACTERS ARE COMBINED 13

coats of guinea pigs show black, white, chocolate, yellow, or
a mixture of certain shades of these different colors. For
instance, spots of yellow-red and of blue-black, also dashes
of black and of white, often occur in different combinations.
But no combination of colors taught Dr. Castle plainer lessons

GUINEA PIGS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

A dark, smooth mother and a rough albino father are at the top. Below is their son.
He is black because, in guinea-pig inheritance, black is dominant over white; he is
rough because rough coat is dominant over smooth coat. At the bottom is a smooth,
white grandchild of the black and the white grandparents. (After Castle, 1905.)
Publication 23, Carnegie Institution

of inheritance than those which he learned from guinea pigs
that were plain black and plain white. Still, even these were
more or less interesting according to another character of
the coat that covered them. For some the coat was rough as
a rug, with spots here and there that looked like " cowlicks "

14 THE NEXT GENERATION

or rosettes ; others, both the long-haired and the short-haired,
had coats smooth like silk. Some had fur so short that each
separate hair stayed in place without being brushed ; others
had hair so long that it could be combed and parted and
brushed from side to side. Indeed, the length of hair for a
full-grown guinea pig runs all the way from less than two
inches on some to over six inches on others.

But whatever the character of the fur, whether long or
short, black or white, rough or smooth, Dr. Castle found that
each one of these characters was transmitted from ancestor
to descendant in accordance with definite laws, and that
the laws themselves are quite like those which control the
descendants of Andalusian fowls.

At first sight this seems to be hardly true. Take, for exam-
ple, his black guinea pigs mated with white albino1 guinea
pigs. Judging by Andalusian fowls, we should expect to see
a row of small blue guinea pigs in the next generation. But
study the diagram and see what actually happened. One
parent was pure-bred black, the other was pure-bred albino
white, yet every child of theirs was as black as its black
parent. Not a blue one or a white one was found anywhere
among them. It looked as if each had inherited from its
black parent alone — as if the white parent had not been
taken into account at all. Still we know that every guinea
pig in the row was bound to be hybrid ; we know there was
no escape for them, because, one and all, they were the
children of two different kinds of pure-bred parents.

2 "An albino is an animal with unpigmented eyes and with little or no
pigment in its coat." — Castle. The eyes of an albino are pink because there
is no pigment in the iris. The color of the blood vessels therefore shines
through it. Albino guinea pigs always have pink eyes. There are white
guinea pigs with black eyes. These are not albino. In this chapter it is
the albino white that are mentioned. The other white ones are not pure-bred.

WHEN CHARACTERS ARE COMBINED

Why, then, were these hybrids black and not blue ? Simply
because, with guinea pigs, black is the so-called dominant
color. This means that when one parent is black and the
other parent white, and when the two colors are therefore

COLOR INHERITANCE IN GUINEA PIGS

Although pure-bred black guinea pigs and hybrid black guinea pigs look alike, they
are really different, and this difference appears in the color of their children. When
a pair of black guinea pigs have only black children, we know the parents are pure-
bred ; but when a pair of black guinea pigs have white children as well as black ones,
we know their parents are hybrids. Study the illustration upwards from children to
parents and decide which ancestors are pure, which hybrid. In doing this remember
that in the second generation of offspring the black one and the white one are mated
with pure-breds like themselves, which are not shown in the drawing. As you study
the illustration keep the following facts in mind : i . Pure-bred black mated with
white gives black in every member of the next generation. Still each is as distinctly
hybrid as are the Andalusian fowls. 2. All are black and not blue, because, with
guinea pigs, black is the dominant, white the recessive character. 3. Whenever a
white guinea pig appears as the offspring of two black guinea pigs, we know that the
parents were hybrids. (Find them in the illustration.) For this reason we can never
tell whether a black guinea pig is pure or hybrid until we have seen its offspring.
4. Whenever all the children of two black guinea pigs are black, we know that at
least one of the parents was pure. (Find them in the drawing.) 5. Whenever a white
guinea pig mates with a white one, all the offspring are sure to be white. Compare
this illustration with that of the Andalusian fowls. Note the differences

to be passed on by inheritance to later generations of guinea
pigs, the black dominates in the immediate next generation.
The white color, on the other hand, is recessive ; that is,
it recedes from sight and does not appear in any member

16. THE NEXT GENERATION

of that next generation. These two words, dominant and
recessive, are to be remembered, because, as we shall see
later, they help us understand why one character and not
another makes its appearance in succeeding generations.

As we already know, with Andalusian fowls neither black
nor white is either dominant or recessive. As a result, when
the two are mated, the color of the next generation is neither
black nor white, but a mixture of the two, and ever}7 member
of the young family is blue.

With guinea pigs, however, black dominates in such high-
handed fashion that white is crowded entirely out of sight in
the next family of descendants. White is therefore called the
recessive color. Even hybrids among them are black. Study
the illustration to see what occurs in each successive generation.
Notice that the children of black hybrid guinea pigs are
of three sorts, even as are the children of blue hybrid Anda-
lusian fowls.

{One is pure-bred white, like its white grandparent.
r\ u j ui i ri •<. ui i j

One is pure-bred black, like its black grandparent.
Two are hybrid black, like the parents.

It is evident, then, that nature does not always label children
so clearly as Andalusian fowls are labeled. Nevertheless, in
both cases the same great laws hold true for ancestors and
descendants alike.

Now go a step further. Dr. Castle tells us that color is
not the only character which moves along in definite fashion,
by definite laws. He says that when he mates a rough-
coated guinea pig with one that has a smooth coat, all the
little guinea pigs of the next generation, whether they are
white or black, brown or yellow, have rough coats ; not one
among them is smooth-coated. This means that rough coat is
the dominant character and smooth coat the recessive character.

WHEN CHARACTERS ARE COMBINED I/

Again, when he takes a pure-bred guinea pig with short
hair and gives it a mate with long hair, each small guinea
pig in the next generation, whatever its color may be, has
short hair. This means that short hair is dominant, long
hair recessive. Thus it turns out that, with guinea pigs, as

THREE GENERATIONS OF GUINEA PIGS

The first row shows a white, smooth-coated father, a black, smooth-coated mother,
and their children. Each one of these is black and has a smooth coat. The second
row shows a pair of these black hybrid children. The third row shows grandchildren
who were children of the hybrids. Notice the white one among them. It resem-
bles its grandfather. (From photographs furnished by Professor W. E. Castle of
Harvard University)

he says, " black is dominant over white, rough coat over
smooth coat, short coat over long coat."

By knowing these facts Dr. Castle is able to mate his
guinea pigs in such wise as to secure precisely the kind of
descendants he wishes them to have. They will be black or
white, with long coat or with short coat, with rough coat or

1 8 THE NEXT GENERATION

with smooth coat, with spots or bands or dashes of color,
in exact accord with the ancestors he chooses for them.1

In all this discussion, remember that there are many hybrid
mixtures of every kind of guinea pig, that hybrids are always
more abundant than pure-breds, and that when men hunt for
laws of inheritance, they are as careful as possible to start
with pure-bred ancestors.

And because these laws of inheritance also affect human
beings, we are interested in them.* Science is teaching that
each one of us is a bundle of combined characters. Shape
of head, of hands, and feet ; length of arm, of leg, and
backbone ; color of skin, of hair, of eyes ; turn of nose
and of jaw; quality of brain-stuff; type of temperament —
all these are combined in different ways in each generation,
and some of the characters may be clearly traced back through
generation after generation of our ancestors.

Speaking of this matter, Dr. Forel says : " In my own face
the two halves are distinctly different, one resembling my
maternal ancestor, and the other, in a lesser degree, my
paternal ancestor ; these points being seen distinctly in
photographs taken in profile."2 He adds: "A person may
have his father's nose and his mother's eyes ; his paternal
grandmother's humor, and the maternal grandfather's intelli-
gence, and all with infinite degrees of variation, for it is only
a matter of more or less accentuated variations."

Much less is known of mental than of physical inheri-
tance, nevertheless Dr. Forel shows how it may explain the
children of many a distinguished man. He says that "a
common woman will lower the level of the offspring of a

1 All this is called " breeding for points." Nothing of the kind has been
done for human beings.

2 Doubtless an unusual case.

WHEN CHARACTERS ARE COMBINED 19

distinguished husband, and inversely. . . . Moreover," as he
adds, " the most deceptive point is the contrast of a man of
genius with his children who do not rise to his standard
because they represent a combination of ancestral energies
with their other parent."

We shall return to this subject later in the book.

The next chapter goes back to the man who first dis-
covered that color, shape, etc. are inherited through the
working of definite laws. No name to-day ranks higher
among students of biology than that of Gregor Mendel,
the man who studied flowers for the sake of understanding
inheritance.

CHAPTER IV

MENDEL AND HIS GARDEN PEAS

Those who watched the man must have wondered what
possessed him. Every day they saw him in the gardens of the

cloister there in Briinn,
Austria, and every day
they noticed that, al-
though he was a teacher
of science, he worked like
a trained gardener over
his growing pea vines.
Moreover, strange to say,
he did not seem to care
so much about the flowers
on the vines as about the
shape and the color of the
seeds and the seed pods.
In the course of time
the neighbors learned that
the teacher's name was
Mendel,1 and that alto-
gether he had twenty-two

different kinds of peas under cultivation. Probably they did
not know that he was searching day and night for laws of

1 Gregor Johann Mendel was born in Heinzendorf, Austria, in 1822.
He was always a faithful student, and became a priest in Briinn, Austria,
in 1847. 1° J868 he was appointed abbot of the Konigskloster, where he
had been priest.

GREGOR JOHANN MENDEL

MENDEL AND HIS GARDEN PEAS

inheritance, and that he expected to find these laws just as
surely by studying peas and their descendants as by studying
animals and their
descendants.

For the sake of
getting clear results
he studied characters
in pairs or groups,
as it were.

1. The form of the
ripe seed — whether
round and smooth or
angular and deeply
wrinkled.

2. The color of the
cotyledon — whether
yellow or green.

3. The color of the
seed coat — whether
white, gray, or brown.

4. The form of
the ripe seed pod —
whether inflated and
smooth or constricted
between the peas and
wrinkled.

5. The color of
the unripe pod —
whether green or
bright yellow.

6. The way the flowers grew — whether they were bunched
together at the top or scattered along on the stem.

COLOR INHERITANCE IN PEAS

A, pod of yellow peas ; B, pod of green peas ; C,
offspring of A and B ; Z>, offspring of C. Notice
that in C yellow is dominant and green recessive,
and that green appears again in D, just as white
guinea pigs appear among the offspring of hybrid
black guinea pigs. (From " Mendel's Principles of
Heredity," by W. Bateson)

22 THE NEXT GENERATION

7. The height of the plant. One kind had a stem seven
feet long, while the stem of another was but a foot long.

Mendel kept each kind absolutely separate from all the
others ; that is, he never let the pollen of one kind reach
the stamens of another kind unless he himself put it there.

By being so careful he knew precisely which parents
headed the list of each set of descendants. He could also
tell which characters crowded the others out in the next
generation. Those that dominated he called dominant;
those that receded out of sight he called recessive. In fact,
Mendel was the first man who ever used these words in this
way, but they explain the case so well that nowadays we all
use them. Here are some of the dominant and recessive
characters of Mendel's peas in two separate columns.

DOMINANT RECESSIVE

Tallness. Dwarfness.

Round seeds. Wrinkled seeds.

Colored seed coats. White seed coats.

Yellow albumen in cotyledon. Green albumen in cotyledon.

Purple flowers. White flowers.

Sometimes characters were neither dominant nor recessive,
so that the next generation was of necessity a mixture.

Mendel kept on with his work of crossing pollen, watching
results, and writing records until eight full years had passed.
Then at last, in 1865 and again in 1869, he reviewed what
he had done, put his statistics together, came to his conclu-
sions, and wrote them down for the benefit of other people.
In these papers he told how he had developed new kinds of
peas, why he had done it, and what laws of inheritance he
believed he had discovered.

When he read his papers to the scientific society at Briinn,
he himself was excited and enthusiastic, but he saw plainly

MENDEL AND HIS GARDEN PEAS

enough that those who listened were neither excited nor
enthusiastic. Indeed, they hardly seemed even interested,
and when the reading was over, Mendel's own excitement
was gone. His heart was heavy with disappointment. He
had expected so much, yet nothing came of it. After that

GREEN ROUND

WRINKLED

1 $1 "i

i *- 1 M

.;jr Tgj ear

YW GR YR

Q U

Gf?

INHERITANCE OF SEED CHARACTERS IN PEAS

Y, yellow ; G, green ; W, wrinkled ; R, round. Notice that when green round peas are
fertilized by pollen from yellow wrinkled peas, the offspring (only one is shown) in
the first filial generation (F^) are all yellow and round. This means that yellow and
round are dominant, while green and wrinkled are recessive. Also notice that in the
second filial generation (F%) the recessive green and wrinkled appear again in differ-
ent combinations with the dominant characters. (From " Mendel's Principles of
Heredity," by W. Bateson)

his papers were simply printed and packed away to gather
dust in the Briinn library. And there they stayed, out of
sight and out of mind, unheard-of and undreamed-of, for
thirty-four years. Fortunately, however, during all these
years the library had them in safe keeping.

24 THE NEXT GENERATION

Mendel himself died in 1884, and it is reported that many
times before he died he was heard to say, " Meine Zeit wird
schon kommen " (" My time will yet come "). Then at last
it did come for in 1900, sixteen years after he had been
buried and apparently forgotten, his priceless papers were
discovered by younger scientists, and news of the discovery
was telegraphed to all parts of the world.

To-day every book that discusses inheritance takes Mendel
and his laws into account. Every breeder who studies in-
heritance in rats, rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, and men builds
on foundations which Mendel laid over fifty years ago in his
Austrian gardens. Every intelligent man who raises plants
and animals for the market improves his stock according to
laws which Mendel discovered.

Indeed, in these days the whole subject of inheritance is
stamped with his name. We speak of " Mendel's laws of
inheritance" and of " Mendelism," which means the same
thing. The truth is, the laws given in the last two chapters
are nothing but Mendel's laws as we see them working
through families of fowls and guinea pigs.

Study the following statements carefully. Compare them
with the diagram of Andalusian fowls, and see how well they
go together.

MENDEL'S LAWS STATED IN SIMPLE TERMS

1 . When pure-breds are mated with other pure-breds like
themselves, every one of their offspring will be pure-bred.
Moreover, so long as pure-bred continues to mate with pure-
bred, the descendants of every generation will continue to
be pure-bred.

2. When a pure-bred of one kind is mated with a pure-bred
of another kind, every member of the next generation is hybrid.

MENDEL AND HIS GARDEN PEAS 25

3. When hybrids are mated with each other, half of their
offspring will be hybrid, one quarter will be pure-bred like
the father, the other quarter will be pure-bred like the mother.

These, then, are Mendel's great laws of inheritance. He
discovered them by studying averages taken for multitudes
of cases. They apply equally well to plants and to animals
of every kind in every land.1

Mendel discovered his laws through the help of garden
peas. Other scientists have proved them through the help
of rats, rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, and other small animals.
We ourselves should make use of them for the advantage of
our own descendants.

1 In 1900, just before Mendel's work had been discovered, these same
laws of inheritance were rediscovered by three different students, who inves-
tigated independently in three different countries — De Vries in Holland,
Correns in Germany, and Tschermak in Austria.

CHAPTER V
LAWS OF INHERITANCE PUT TO USE

During the year 1900 the National Association of British
and Irish Millers decided that the wheat yield of Great Britain
was far too small — that a better grade must be grown, and

VARIETY IN HEADS OF WHEAT

The upper row shows two parents with their offspring between them. The second
row shows six types that belong to the next generation of descendants. (Photo-
graphed from specimens supplied by Professor Biffen.) (From " Mendel's Principles
of Heredity," by W. Bateson)

that they themselves must have the benefit of this new wheat
as promptly as possible. Accordingly they raised money and
asked certain scientists to do what they could to produce the
wheat for them.

LAWS OF INHERITANCE PUT TO USE 27

Professor R. H . Biff en, of Cambridge, England, was chosen
as chief investigator. His first act was to get samples of wheat,
each one of which had some especially fine quality. One bore
grain on a stout stalk, another had a full head of wheat, another
was beardless, another yielded a great amount of grain to the
acre, still another could not be injured by the wheat disease
called rust — that is, it was immune to this particular disease.

These and other varieties reached Dr. Biffen from different
countries, and he kept them strictly apart except as he himself
planted and paired them according to the descendants which
he wished them to have. He did no guessing about his work ;
neither did he wait for haphazard results. He had studied
the laws of inheritance, and he knew perfectly well that by
selecting ancestors carefully enough, and by keeping cause
and effect ever in mind, he could travel a straight road toward
his desired end.

After a fashion he was really forcing a new variety of wheat
into existence, and he was so successful that in the course of
time he presented the National Association of Millers with
precisely what they wished. This new wheat had a strong
stalk and a full head of grain kernels. It was rich in gluten
and beardless. It could resist all attacks of the dreaded rust,
and it yielded large quantities of grain to the acre. Science
had helped nature evolve a wheat which satisfied even the
clamor of the millers. They pronounced it a great success.

And what of corn, that other food stand-by ?

In the state of Washington, in 1912, two fields of corn
grew side by side. Each covered ten acres ; each grew in
the same kind of soil ; but, strange to say, one of these fields
yielded about half as much again as the other. I asked what
made the difference, and the farmer who owned the rich
field gave a broad smile.

THE NEXT GENERATION

" Well," he said, " I simply took corn ancestors into account,
and my neighbor over there did n't pay any attention to them."

" In what way ? " I asked.

" The only possible way," came the answer. " I was care-
ful where the seed came from. Last year most of my corn
had one ear to the stalk, just
as his has now ; but I noticed
that some of my stalks had
two ears to the stalk. So
you see, that was my clue.
Those were the ones I saved
for seed corn." How he
smiled !

" Besides that," he went
on, " even when there were
two ears to the stalk, I never
kept seed that grew on weak
stalks. All that corn of
mine"- — and he waved his
hand triumphantly toward
his ten acres — -"came from
seed that grew on strong
stalks ; each one of those
stalks bore two ears apiece.
And look at it now. More
than half that corn has two
ears to the stalk. Some of
it carries three ears. Good investment, wasn't it ? " And he
smiled again.

Had this farmer owned Luther Burbank's seed corn, he
might have done better yet, for Mr. Burbank has raised corn
that grows sixteen feet into the air and bears thirty-two ears

AN EAR OF CORN IN ITS HUSK

LAWS OF INHERITANCE PUT TO USE 29

to the stalk. He has also grown a potato so fine that the
United States Department of Agriculture says it is " adding
seventeen and a half million dollars a year to the farm incomes
of America alone."

There is no question about wheat and corn and potatoes ;
man has changed them all for the better. And the list might
be made many times longer, for nowadays the same laws of in-
heritance are being used to improve tomatoes, watermelons,
apples, grapes, beans, peaches, and other edible things.

Then, too, there is the case of cotton to be rescued from
the weevil.

In the southern states of America the boll weevil is the
pest of the cotton crop. It is a flying insect that punctures
the flower buds and the bolls of cotton and lays its eggs
within. Here these eggs hatch out into small worms which
feed on the heart of the bud. This so damages the growing
flower that it loses its vitality and falls to the ground before
the cotton is formed. At last, however, a variety of cotton
plant has been developed which not only bears cotton that is
long and silky, but which flowers so early in the season that
the cotton itself is ready to be picked before the boll weevil
has harmed it. This single discovery will save thousands of
bajes of cotton every year.

Laws of inheritance have certainly been pressed into prac-
tical use in all sorts of directions. And now steps in Luther
Burbank to show what can be done in securing beauty.

He took the plant amaryllis, with its slender stem and its
blossom two or three inches across, and from this he helped
nature evolve a new amaryllis with low, sturdy trunk about
eighteen inches high, and a blossom nearly a foot in diameter.
He took the common, everyday poppy, multiplied its hybrids
by tens of thousands, made careful selection of ancestors, kept

THE NEXT GENERATION

close watch of descendants, continued the selecting, the re-
jecting, and the multiplying for several years, and to-day it
is as if the flower had been glorified. Each blossom is from
eight to ten inches in diameter. When one is placed above
another in a column, seven of them will stand as high as a
man. With a dozen of these blossoms in front of him, even

VARIATION OF HYBRID POPPY LEAVES

Out of two thousand plants no two were alike. (From " New Creations in Plant
Life," by W. S. Harwood. Published by The Macmillan Company)

a large man would be hidden out of sight. Mr. Burbank
is even able to take " a single one of these new poppy-seed
capsules, divide it into four sections, and, by pollinating each
section, produce from one section an annual plant, from an-
other a perennial, from the third quarter crimson poppies,
from the fourth, white ones." He has also produced a blue
poppy, unknown to the world before, and has changed the
color of the native poppy of California from gold to crimson.

LAWS OF INHERITANCE PUT TO USE 31

In addition he has transformed the plum and has made a
combined fruit from the plum and the apricot. He has taken
the old-fashioned wild daisy of New England, has combined
it with daisies from Japan and England, and has secured the
lovely Shasta daisy, which has no rival. He has taken the
thorn-covered cactus of the deserts of the West, has removed
the thorns for future generations, and has made the plant

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PLUM

The two larger ones are seedlings of the other two. (From " New Creations in
Plant Life," by W. S. Harwood. Published by The Macmillan Company)

useful to man and beast alike. No limit can be set to the
value of this single transformation.

The list of what Mr. Burbank has helped nature to do
might be made much longer. In each case, however, he
merely did the guiding ; nature did the work according to
laws of its own. The same is true of changes brought about
in animal life.

Take sheep, for example. Some are liked because they
are hornless, some for the quality of mutton they supply,
some for the long, soft wool they grow. Knowing what was

THE NEXT GENERATION

desired, and knowing how to secure results through inheri-
tance, certain breeders in England claim to have produced
a final and best variety of sheep. Here all the wished-for
characters have been so happily brought together that to-day
breeders proudly show the result — a sheep which bears fine

wool, is hornless, and
yields the sort of mut-
ton that meat-eaters
like the best. Practical
breeders have secured
its evolution by con-
trolling its ancestors.
We may take cattle
for another example.
Shorthorns have been
developed in England
during the past hun-
dred and fifty years.
They are profitable for
their beef and some-
times for their milking
qualities. Then there
is the Jersey, famous
for its rich cream. In
1904, at the World's
Fair in St. Louis, a
Jersey cow took the
prize. And no wonder, for within seven and a half months
her cream yielded over 547 pounds of butter. Holstein cattle
are bred for the quantity of milk they give ; Hereford for the
quality of their beef. Some are chosen for color, for shape,
or for size ; others for their combination of characters.

THE CACTUS

In the foreground is the ordinary thorny kind ;
those in the rear are the thornless ones of the
same species, secured by Mr. Burbank. (From
" New Creations in Plant Life," by W. S. Harwood.
Published by The Macmillan Company)

LAWS OF INHERITANCE PUT TO USE 33

Horses are bred not for quality of meat, not for texture
of wool, but for the work they can do, for the speed they
can make in running, for their shape, their color, and their
general good looks.

But all this is about modern changes in plants and animals.
It is an account of forced evolution, as it were. It shows
what takes place when man uses the laws of inheritance in this

JERSEY Cow, FIGGIS 76106

Property of C. I. Hood & Company, Lowell, Massachusetts. Champion and Grand

Champion, World's Fair, St. Louis, 1904. Made 547 pounds 6 ounces of butter in

seven and a half months. Such a cow is worth perhaps a dozen of the ordinary kind

that make 125 pounds in a year

direction or that, as he wishes to get something different in the
next generation, and in the next, for indefinite periods of time.
As we know, the whole era of this modern experiment lies
within the memory of the human race. There were, however,
other eras and generations unnumbered, in ages before man
began his reckoning, when evolution made the same resistless
headway, yet moved at slower pace and without the aid of man.
The horse best illustrates this prehistoric, slower evolution.

CHAPTER VI

EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE

Hieroglyphics on ancient tombs show that, even so long
as thirty-five hundred years ago, royal Egyptians went to war
in chariots drawn by horses. Other records tell us that wher-
ever man has gone since then in the development of civili-
zation, he has taken the horse with him. To-day, therefore,
we find this animal in all lands where man lives and can use
him. And this use takes different forms. Horses are bred
for strength, for speed, for gait, for looks, for size, for the
ability to perform tricks, and for several other special pur-
poses ; but no development of any sort changes them beyond
recognition. By their looks, their acts, and their anatomy we
decide without question that all modern horses are related to
each other.

Bear these facts in mind as you go to the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City, and think
about them as you visit what is called the Department of
Vertebrate Paleontology. This is where many fossil bones1
are kept.

1 A fossil bone is one that has been gradually turned into stone during
past ages. Little by little, through chemical action, mineral matter takes
the place of the bone, and when the exchange is fully made, the bone it-
self has really become rock. Thousands of years are needed for the change,
but, once made, the fossilized bone is brittle and heavy and able to en-
dure as long as the rocks themselves shall last. It is to this bone petri-
faction that scientists owe their knowledge of animals whose skeletons
have been preserved unchanged for millions of years.

EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE 35

When you reach the place, hunt for the horse bones.
You will find them grouped together — skull bones here,
leg bones there, jaw bones in a row by themselves. Each
set is in its own glass case ; each is carefully mounted and
labeled ; each is protected from meddlesome hands and
from fire. Notice that all are arranged according to size,
and that they show progress from smaller to larger.

Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History

HORSE SKELETONS COMPARED

The larger skeleton is of a horse of modern times. The smaller one (set in plaster)
is of a primitive horse that lived three million years or more ago. (After Osborn)

Give special attention to the skeletons — one sixteen inches
high and about as large as a good-sized cat, another a giant
that towers as high as the largest dray horse in a modern city.

If both these skeletons were wrapped in flesh again, if they
were alive and could move about and meet each other to-day,
neither creature would whinny to the other, for neither would
recognize the other as a flesh-and-blood relation.

36 THE NEXT GENERATION

Nevertheless, science tells us that thousands of other bones
have been found, that these are graded all the way between
the smaller and the larger skeleton, and that they prove the
following remarkable fact : The huge dray horse is as truly
related to the small, catlike creature as we ourselves are
related to our own distant ancestors of prehistoric times.

To be sure, the smaller animal lived as much as three mil-
lion years before his big relative was born, and it was during
this time that legs and jaw and skull bones went through
their tremendous transformations. The diagram shows what
these transformations were.

Follow the foot as it changes into a hoof. Notice the
middle toe. See it grow larger and larger, until the side toes
are entirely crowded out of service. They do not so much as
touch the ground. They hang in mid-air as the animal walks.

It took lengthened ages for nature to bring this change
about. Then, in course of time, all but the middle toe had
vanished from sight. Gradually also the toenail part of the
middle toe had turned itself into a pounding hoof. And
to-day, as Dr. Matthew1 says, "the horse may be said to
be an animal that walks on its middle finger nail, all the
other fingers having disappeared."

The nail itself has indeed become a hoof so broad and
so strong that it is able to support the entire weight of the
animal that travels through life upon it.

Examine the legs of any modern horse and you may find
traces of two earlier toes. These so-called splint bones are
four or five inches above the hoof, and they are so far out of
sight and out of the way that they do not hinder the animal
either in walking or in running. Neither do they in any wise
help the horse as he walks and runs.

i Author of " Evolution of the Horse."

2 x

38 THE NEXT GENERATION

See by the diagram that while toe bones were changing in
this way, jaw bones and teeth were changing, too. Notice that
the small jaw of the smallest horse had teeth close together
all the way from back to front. Now trace the change. See
the jaws stretch out in front little by little from generation
to generation.

Notice that even though the jaws grew longer, the num-
ber of the teeth stayed the same. Not a new one arrived to
fill up the gap. The front teeth stayed in front, the rest
stayed on the back of the jaw, a growing gap separated the
two sets, and that gap grew wider and wider, until our own
kind of horse appeared. And it is because this modern horse
has several inches of stretched-out jaw which carry no teeth
whatever, that a twentieth-century man can guide a twentieth-
century horse with bit and bridle.

When you find a friendly horse some day, examine his
mouth and make discoveries for yourself. At the same time
think of his ancestors and try to imagine what men thought
when they first found fossil bones of that most ancient,
smallest horse.

Dr. Matthew says that when its bones first came to light
years ago, even students of such subjects did not so much as
suspect that the little creature was a horse. Instead they
called him Hyracotherium, meaning " the coneylike beast."
But afterwards so many other bones were found in Nebraska,
Arizona, Oregon, and elsewhere, that these same students
were able to construct the bone pedigree of our modern
horse. At the same time they named the different types,
as the chart shows.

They traced connections from smaller horse to larger, from
four toes to one toe, from foot to hoof, from short jaw to
long jaw, and as they did all this they saw that every bone,

EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE

every tooth, and every part of the skeleton had been changed
by slow degrees during unmeasured periods of past time.

Moreover, with this knowledge as their basis, they knew
they had in hand a key which would help unlock the mys-
tery of all change in all animals, both ancient and modern.

Head

Fore Foot

HindFoot

Teeth

OneToe

Splints of

2nd and 4th

digits

OneToe

Splints of

2nd and 4th

digits

Protohippus

Mesohippus

Protorohippus

ThreeToes

Side toes

not touching

the ground

Three_Toes

Side toes

not touching

the ground

Long-
Crowned,
Cement-
covered

J ThreeToes
Side toes
touching the
ground;
Splint of 5thdigit

Three Toes

Side toes

touching the

ground

Four Toes

Short -
Crowned,
without
Cement

Hyracotherium

(Eohippus)

FourToes
Splint of
1st digit

ThreeToes
Splint of
5th digit

DRAWING OF SKULLS, FEET, AND TEETH OF PREHISTORIC HORSES,
GROUPED FOR COMPARISON

They show the development of the horse by evolution. (Reproduced, by permission,
from " Origin and History of the Horse," by. H. F. Osborn)

As might be supposed, it takes two sets of scientists to
make out the truth about buried bones.

i . There Js the geologist. He studies the earth itself,
knows which parts of it were formed first, which later, and
by knowing just where the bones came from, he tells us which

40 THE NEXT GENERATION

animals lived earlier, which later. He assures us that the
smallest horse bones are the oldest horse bones ever found.

2. The paleontologist comes next. He puts fossil bones
together and tells us what kind of creature each animal was.
It is the paleontologist who describes horse bones in the
museum. He lets us see for ourselves that they are linked
together from generation to generation, and that they make
up an unbroken chain of ancestors and descendants.

Other fossil bones tell tales of monster creatures that
lived and changed- and vanished from the earth long before
man appeared. Each separate one yields its own separate
story, but no set of bones is easier to study, none gives quite
such a straight-ahead history, as the bones of the horse.

These have been found in North and South America, in
Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of all these places, however,
Dr. Matthew says the best series comes from what is called
the Tertiary Bad Lands of the Western United States.

As you bear these bones in mind, turn to the finest horse
you know and think of his pedigree. Also observe his present
size and shape, his powerful muscles, his long and slender
legs, his neck just long enough to carry his mouth to the
ground for grazing. Look at his strong, broad hoof (he
is the only single-hoofed animal in the world) and try to
realize that it was the ancestors of this horse that made him
what he is to-day.

Many a man points proudly back to an ancestry more noble
than himself. The horse might point backwards, too, not to
show that once upon a time he had ancestors bigger, braver,
more glorious than he himself is now, but simply to show
that from small beginnings big results have come — to make
it plain that, quite without conscious purpose, his early an-
cestors improved their opportunities, adjusted themselves to

Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN HORSE

The upper figure shows the skull of a large modern horse. The lower figure shows
a prehistoric five-toed horse restored and placed here for comparison. (After Osborn)

42 THE NEXT GENERATION

circumstances, and thereby so influenced their descendants
that each generation passed a better inheritance on to the next.

To-day if horses had the brain power of man, if they could
study the past and talk about it as man is apt to do, each
would have the right to say, " Through the struggle of my
ancestors I am what I am."

Since the laws of inheritance do not affect the horse alone,
since they mold all other animals (including man), since they
cover generations of time that sweep back beyond the reach
of our reckoning, we understand why it is that scientists study
the subject from year to year with an interest that never flags.
They are determined to find out all they can about the laws
which control and gradually change living beings as the
ages go by.

No one has spoken more clearly on this subject than
Charles Darwin. For this reason the next chapter will give
some of his facts.

CHAPTER VII

A FEW OF DARWIN'S FACTS

Night after night Charles Darwin, already an aged man
and famous, watched the actions of his angleworms. He
kept them in his study in flowerpots, for he wished to find
out for himself how
much mental power
they had. He knew
they could not see,
for they had no eyes ;
that they could not
hear, for they had no
ears ; that they could
feel, for he had seen
them shrink from the
touch of any sharp
thing. But the ques-
tion was, Did they
think as well as feel ?
Did they guide their
actions consciously ?
This Charles Darwin
wished to know.

It happens that

angleworms can only be studied at night, because by daylight
they hide themselves underground, out of sight, but at night
they stretch themselves out of their burrows and face the

CHARLES DARWIN

THE NEXT GENERATION

world and run the risk of being captured. By night, there-
fore, Darwin not only watched their operation in his flower-
pots, but he also took his lantern and went into the fields to
find them. Sometimes they raised themselves on their taper-
ing, bent-over ends and seemed to be giving strict attention ;
sometimes they shrank back into their burrows as if the light
on their bodies gave unpleasant sensations. Darwin watched
them as they seized leaves and drew them down to stop up
the mouths of their burrows. He saw how
they saved their lives and lost them ; how
they did their burrowing ; how they gathered
food and used it ; how they survived the winter
rolled up in balls underground.

For years the study went on, and no doubt
it had really begun years earlier, when Darwin
went a-fishing as a boy, for he writes : " I had
a strong taste for angling, and would sit for
any number of hours on the bank of a river or
pond watching the float. I was told that I
could kill worms with salt and water, and from
that day I never spitted a live worm, though at the expense,
probably, of some loss of success."

This, then, is our introduction to the boy who was to become
one of the world's most famous naturalists — the man who was
to change certain beliefs of men for all future generations. No
student of inheritance consents to be ignorant about Darwin.
The work of his life lies between the time when, as a boy,
he salted angleworms to save them from pain on his fish-
hook by day, and when, as an aged man, he studied angle-
worms by night for knowledge of their habits. It also appears
that from the beginning of his life until it ended, Darwin's
work knit itself together as two parts.

AN ANGLE-
WORM

A FEW OF DARWIN'S FACTS 45

1. He gathered facts.

2. He drew conclusions from his facts.

Even before he was eight years old he collected shells and
compared them with each other. Next he began beetle col-
lecting. He was now a university student in Cambridge,
England, and wherever he went in his walks, he was ready to
see beetles and to seize them. This brought him to grief one
day, for, as he says, " on tearing off some old bark, I saw two
rare beetles, and seized one in each hand ; then I saw a third
and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped
the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas,
it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue-
so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as
was the third one."

And this is but a sample of Darwin's enthusiasm from
youth to old age ; he never lost it. On every side he gathered
facts, and when he had facts enough, he began to draw con-
clusions. No doubt his largest field for facts was South
America. When he was twenty-two years old, he was asked
to go as naturalist on board the Beagled He accepted the
invitation ; spent five years in sailing from one country to
another ; made collections everywhere ; and when he reached
home again in 1836, he was laden with treasures and with
the memory of his experiences.

While in South America he came upon unnumbered fossil
bones of buried monsters — creatures that had lived there and

1 The Beagle was a sailing craft that weighed 235 tons. It was sent out
on a voyage of scientific investigation by the English government, and
Darwin went as naturalist for the expedition. As he himself states it, " The
real object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and
Tierra del Fuego, to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and some islands
of the Pacific, and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements around
the world."

THE NEXT GENERATION

had died there before man had so much as appeared on the
scene. He found head bones of some, leg bones of others,
numberless huge teeth, and a few skeletons that were com-
plete in every detail.

Darwin named one of these the toxodon. He said it was
as large as an elephant, and one of the strangest animals ever
discovered. By its teeth he knew it had gnawed its food,
just as rats and rabbits also gnaw when they eat ; and from

THE BEAGLE LAID ASHORE FOR REPAIRS

the position of its eyes and ears and nose he knew it was
an animal that lived in the water. In one place he came
upon what he calls " a perfect catacomb of monsters of
extinct races."

Keep the giants themselves in mind, then note these«other
facts : Within the memory of man no such creatures have
been alive in South America ; all were extinct and turned to
fossils when man first found himself in the land which had
belonged to those earlier huge inhabitants. So true is this that
in South America to-day the only wild living creatures are

A FEW OF DARWIN'S FACTS 47

comparatively small — the tapir, the deer, the monkey, etc.
Darwin says that ten specimens of the largest kinds weigh
an average of but 250 pounds apiece. It is interesting to
compare the size of these animals with the size of those in
South Africa. There the elephant, the hippopotamus, the
giraffe, eland, rhinoceros, and others are so large that ten
members of the large kinds of animals weigh an average
of 6040 pounds apiece.

The strange fact about all this is that ages ago South
American animals were quite as large as the present-day
monsters of South Africa. Darwin says that at the very time
when the animals of South America were becoming extinct,
those of South Africa stayed alive through their descendants.

Another set of Darwin's facts had to do with the horse.
History tells us that when Columbus and his Spaniards came
to America, not a horse was to be found in the land. They
were, in fact, so unknown and unheard-of that when, years
afterwards, a few were brought over from Europe, the native
Indians looked at them with curiosity and fright. Im-
agine, then, the surprise of Darwin and other naturalists when
they found fossil horse bones in different places from the
northern extremity of North America to the southern ex-
tremity of South America. Clearly enough, horses were
among the oldest inhabitants of the land ; yet, quite as clearly,
not one had survived to receive Columbus. All had died and
vanished from sight long before man arrived in modern times.

Now it is interesting to know that while the largest early
animals were dying off in South America they were also
meeting the same fate everywhere else in the world except
in Africa. The following statements bear on this point.

i . Fossil remains which have been found in Europe, Asia,
North America, and South America prove that ages ago

48 THE NEXT GENERATION

animals of the same general kinds were alive in all three
continents during the same era of the world's history.

2. The theory which explains this is that in early times
there was land connection between Siberia and North America,
and that the joining place was where Bering's Strait now
separates the two continents.

It is supposed that in those days this land connection was a
well-traveled road, across which animals of every sort and size
came as immigrants from the Old World to the New. " It
seems most probable," writes Darwin, " that the North Ameri-
can elephants, mastodons, horses, and the hollow-horned rumi-
nants migrated on land since submerged near Behring's Straits,
from Siberia into North America, and thence on land since
submerged in the West Indies, into South America, where
for a time they mingled with the forms characteristic of that
southern continent, and have since become extinct."

From first to last, Darwin was searching for facts which
might connect one set of living creatures with all others. He
wished, if possible, to relate the life of the past — even its
monsters — to the life of the present. More than this, he
wished to relate the life of the present to the life of the fu-
ture. He hoped to find laws which would make it easier to
understand why there are such countless varieties of living
creatures on the earth to-day, and what their exact relation
to each other is. In other words, the reason why Darwin
gathered facts was because he was determined to find out as
much as possible about the progress of life on the earth from
generation to generation, through the ages of the past.

This was the burden of his ambition, and facts were pil-
ing up as the Beagle continued its voyage to the Galapagos
Islands.

CHAPTER, VIII

DARWIN'S PROBLEM

The Galapagos Islands lie on the equator, six hundred
miles from the western coast of South America.

There are ten islands in the group, and here Darwin found
animals unheard-of elsewhere in the world — tortoises by the

Culpepper I.

WenmanL

Naorborouah I. V5
Albermarle I.

60 Miles

QzAbinqdon I.

Bindloes I.

Tower I.

Indefatiadble 1.

% Jjjj*
Barnnytonl. Chatham I.

Charles I. Hood's 1.

THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS

thousand, that weighed one hundred pounds apiece and over.
" I frequently got on their backs," he writes, " and then giv-
ing a few raps on the hinder part of their shells, they would
rise up and walk away ; but I found it very difficult to keep

50 THE NEXT GENERATION

my balance." Here were lizards two and three feet long,
one "terrestrial," the other "aquatic" "the latter," says
Darwin, " a hideous looking creature of a dirty black color,
stupid and sluggish in its movements." Sometimes these
lizards weighed twenty pounds apiece or more. They went
off on swimming parties a hundred yards from shore. As a
certain sea captain said, " They go to sea in herds a-fishing,
and sun themselves on the rocks, and may be called alliga-
tors in miniature."

In this surprising place Darwin found and named new
species l of plants and animals by the dozen and the hundred.
On every side he saw new birds, new reptiles, new shells,
new insects ; and yet, as he himself says, " by innumerable
trifling details of structure, and even by the tones of voice
and plumage of the birds," these various creatures reminded
him of those other creatures, similar yet so different, that
had lived on the " temperate plains of Patagonia or the hot,
dry deserts of northern Chile. . . . What is the explana-
tion?" he asks. "Why were they created on American types
of organization ? "

1 A species is a group of plants or animals in which the individuals are
very much alike.. For example, one species of violet has white blossoms,
another has blue blossoms ; one has round leaves, another has leaves of
lancet shape. Each is a different species, but all are violets. Then there
are the humming birds. One species is almost as large as an English spar-
row, other species are no larger than huge butterflies. One species has
bright feathers on its neck that give it the name rubythroat, another
has half a dozen stiff red -feathers that stand 'above the others on its
throat. All these are humming birds, but each is a different species. All
other animals and plants are divided into species in the same way. Scien-
tists do this for the sake of studying the life of the earth. They also put
different species together to make a larger group, called a genus. They
put genera together to make a family, and families together to make an
order. Then come classes, divisions, and finally the animal and vegetable
kingdoms.

DARWIN'S PROBLEM 51

He had gone no farther than this with his questions when
the Beagle returned to England in I836.1 And now began
a new epoch in his life. He had his collection of fossils
from South America. He also had his collection of modern
skeletons from the same country, from the Galapagos Islands,
from England itself ; and he wished to find some laws of
life which would explain the differences between them, and
which would, at the same time, show that all forms of life
are connected. /

He asked himself whether or not the earlier kinds became
extinct before the later ones were created ; why they became
extinct ; why present-day creatures on the Galapagos Islands
are more like the buried giants of South America than like
modern animals in Africa ; why there are so many species
of different plants and animals in the world, etc. The list
of his questions was very long when he reached England,
and he saw that he must have still more facts before he could
even try to draw conclusions.

To get these facts he turned his attention to pigeons, com-
paring them with each other. Among them he found the
Carrier pigeon, with its large nostrils, its wide mouth, its
lengthened eyelids, its long, steady flight over land and
water ; also the Tumbler, with its way of flying high up
and tumbling down, heels over head, at unexpected moments.
Then there was the Pouter, with its stretched-out body, wings,
and legs, and its enormous crop, which it proudly inflates
to prodigious size; the Jacobin, with feathers that grow

1 During this voyage the Beagle visited the following places, in the order
in which they are -mentioned : Cape de Verde Islands, St. Paul's Rocks,
Fernando, Noronha, South America, Galapagos Islands, Falkland Islands,
Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Helena, As-
cension. The Beagle did not go around the world, as at first intended.

THE NEXT GENERATION

backward down the back of the neck and stand up like a
hood ; and, as conspicuous as any, the Fantail, with so many
feathers in its tail (thirty or forty instead of twelve or fourteen)
that it hardly looks like a pigeon at all.

Darwin studied each kind, and he came to the conclusion
that each had been secured through man's careful selection

of pigeon ancestors — that
not one had been created pre-
cisely as he himself found it.
He even went so far as to say
he was sure " that the com-
mon opinion of naturalists is
correct, namely, that all have
descended from the Rock
pigeon. ... At least a score
of pigeons might be chosen,"
he said, " which, if shown to
an ornithologist and he was
told that they were wild birds,
would certainly, I think, be
ranked by him as well-defined
species."

He talked the matter over
with every intelligent bird
breeder whom he met, and

each assured him that the one essential thing was to select
ancestors according to what was wanted in the next genera-
tion. All acknowledged that the process took time. One told
Darwin that " he could produce any given feather in three
years, but that it would take six years to produce head and
neck." In every case this selecting was done by the breeder
himself. He knew precisely what he wanted.

THE WILD PARENT OF ALL THE

DOMESTICATED PIGEONS THAT HAVE

BEEN DEVELOPED BY SELECTION

(From " Domesticated Animals and
Plants," by E. Davenport)

DARWIN'S PROBLEM

The same was true of sheep breeders, and Darwin talked
with them too. " In Saxony," he says, "the importance of

TYPES OF PIGEON DEVELOPED BY SELECTION AND BREEDING

i, Jacobins; 2, English Carrier ; 3, Duchess ; 4, Fantails ; 5, Birmingham Tumblers ;
6, English Pouter. (From " Domesticated Animals and Plants," by E. Davenport)

the principle of selection in regard to merino sheep is so
fully recognized that men follow it as a trade ; the sheep are
placed on the table and are studied like a picture by the

54 THE NEXT GENERATION

connoisseur ; this is done three times, at intervals of months,
and the sheep are each time marked and classed, so that the
very best may ultimately be selected for breeding. . . . And,"
he continues, " not one man in a thousand has accuracy of
eye and judgment sufficient to become a good breeder." Lord
Sommerville speaks of their success : "It would seem as if
they had marked out upon a wall a form perfect in itself,
and then had given it existence."

Do not forget that all this was before even the best breeders
had heard of Mendel's laws and before Darwin himself had
come to any conclusion about the power that controls the
changing forms of life. Remember that even before Mendel
and Darwin lived, breeders knew the following facts :

1. By choosing ancestors they could get the desired type
of descendants.

2. Only by preventing cross mating could these new types
be preserved.

Darwin saw how easy it is to explain the beginning of any
species when man is behind, controlling ancestors. But he
wished to know how it comes about that wild animals have
changed, too. He wondered if there might not be other laws
which control descendants even when man has nothing to
do with choosing ancestors for them. He believed there are
such laws, and he hoped to find them.

Darwin puzzled himself with this problem for twenty-three
years, and at last he did what he could to answer it, in his
book " On the Origin of Species by means of Natural
Selection."

The volume itself was published in 1859. Twelve hundred
and fifty copies were printed for the first edition, and every
one was sold on the day of publication. Three thousand more
were printed. These went fast, too, and by 1876 sixteen

DARWIN'S PROBLEM 55

thousand copies of the book had been printed and sold. It
was translated into every European language and was dis-
cussed by scientific papers in every scientific center of the
world. It was a topic of talk for individual scientists as they
met on the street, in the lecture hall, in the drawing-room,
and everywhere else. Indeed, the excitement was so great
that college students talked about the book in club and class-
room. They sat up late at night in mighty discussion over
Darwin's problem and over his solution of it. Certain mer-
chants and preachers took up the subject and waxed eloquent
about it over the counter and from the pulpit. And, as might
have been expected, in every case those who knew most about
the facts of life were usually most inclined to accept Darwin's
theory about the origin of species. At the same time also, then
as now, numberless persons lived in ignorance of Darwin's
book and of what it taught.

Until he died, in 1882, Darwin continued to gather facts,
to draw conclusions, and to write about them for the benefit
of those who were younger and more ignorant than he was.
When he died he was seventy-five years old, honored and
loved by thinkers the world over. His fame came through
the success he had in studying certain problems of life, for
his theory of evolution had turned upside down some of the
cherished beliefs of the centuries. It was he who joined
facts together in what we shall call the " five-linked chain."

CHAPTER IX

FIVE LINKS TO THE CHAIN
I. THE PRODIGALITY OF NATURE

At ten o'clock this morning I sat on the veranda and
watched flying objects that traveled through the air ready for
planting and for growing. Dandelion seeds, by scores and by

hundreds, sailed across my
vision like small parachutes
bearing a precious burden.
Maple seeds, thousands upon
thousands of them, whirred
by in zigzag fashion, steered
without hands, guided by
their delicate paddle rudders.
They too bore their treasure
of life and were ready for
growing. Elm-tree seeds
by the hundred thousand
showered down like brown
snowflakes in the sunshine,
and rolled over each other as if in a panic of haste to find
a lodging place for the elm trees of the next generation.1

As I watched all this I thought about the wasteful extrava-
gance of nature. At the same time I stepped out to do some
counting. Within one square inch of space I found twenty-five

1 These different kinds of seeds are not all in their prime at the same
time, but in Ohio their seasons overlap each other.

DANDELION SEEDS READY FOR
FLIGHT

FIVE LINKS TO THE CHAIN

MAPLE SEEDS

elm seeds crowded together in a heap. Near by, in another
heap, on another inch of ground, were fifteen maple seeds
piled upon each other, and there were many square yards

of surface almost as thickly
covered. One dainty dandelion
stalk carried one hundred and
fifty-four tiny parachutes in full
sail, ready to fly off when the next
carrier breeze came that way.

All this was on my own lawn
one bright spring morning. I
then thought of the wooded
groves just outside of town. I remembered the trees, the
shrubs, the weeds, and the wild flowers — some in full bloom,
others already gone to seed. I knew that millions of seeds
were under the trees and on the shrubs in every forest during
every spring season. I also knew that no more than tens or
hundreds of these seeds ever take root and grow.

I thought of the rivers too, and of the lakes, the ponds,
and the ocean, with their millions of fish eggs laid in every
breeding spot — multitudes never to be hatched,
other multitudes to be devoured by bigger fish
as soon as hatched, and very few to live long
enough to pass life on to the next generation.
" Prodigality, prodigality, on every side ! " was
my exclamation.

Next I turned to printed records and looked
for added facts of the same sort.

Dr. Thompson says that a cod is reported to have two.
million eggs, and that " if these all developed into cods, there
would soon be no more fishing." This means that the ocean
would be so full of swarming, struggling, dying cod, that

ELM SEED

58 THE NEXT GENERATION

immigrants and emigrants alike would be able to walk across
a slippery cod pathway between Europe and America.

Dr. Thompson also says that " if all the progeny of one
oyster survived and multiplied, its great-great-grandchildren
would number sixty-six with thirty-three noughts after it
(66,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), and the
heap of shells would be eight times the size of the world."

No human mind can grasp such figures as these. They
are indeed extreme examples of the first law of Darwin's
famous five-linked chain.

II. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

The second law follows as a matter of course. Indeed,
there is no escaping it, for with creatures of every kind
multiplying at this rate, — with each of them obliged to
find food or die, — the competition grows terrific. It becomes
a struggle merely to keep alive. This, then, is the second
link of Darwin's chain.

It seems a peaceful world as I glance out of my window
at the present moment. But, without seeing it done, I know
that all forms of life are struggling not merely for food but
for very existence too. Large insects are living on those that
are smaller ; small birds are living on large insects ; birds are
killing worms ; cats are killing birds ; dogs are killing rabbits ;
man is killing and eating birds and beasts of many different
kinds ; microbes are killing millions of creatures both large
and small ; and man is killing microbes.

The slaughter is universal ; the conflict is colossal. It con-
tinues on every side every day, and it is inevitable. For if the
supply of plants and animals were not limited in some way,
— if all eggs were allowed to hatch and if all young animals
lived on to good old age, — there would soon be such a battle

FIVE LINKS TO THE CHAIN 59

on the earth as has never been dreamed of heretofore. Swarm-
ing millions of creatures would, within a few days, crowd out
of sight even the standing space of the earth. Soon after-
ward the food supply of the world would be used up, and
starvation would face all save those who found it possible
to support their own lives by taking other lives.

This is no fancy picture. It would be the inevitable state
of things if the prodigality of nature were not checked some-
how. Fortunately there are checks on every side. Wind and
weather, flood and fire, take part in limiting the numbers of
those that are to survive for a next generation. For the
struggle is not simply between the individuals themselves
but also between each individual and its surroundings. Clearly
enough, then, the maimed, the weak, and the inefficient gen-
erally have the poorest chance to live and become ancestors.
And it is just because they do not live long enough to be-
come ancestors that the race escapes deterioration. On every
side they are crowded out in the struggle.

III. VARIATION

This fact brings us face to face with the third link in Dar-
win's chain. He noticed that while some animals of a species
are large, others of the same species are small ; where some
are strong, others are weak ; where some have keen intelli-
gence, others are slow of understanding. He saw that always
and everywhere, among all kinds of plants and animals, there
are contrasts, differences, and variations. On this fact he
based what he called the law of variation. It is the third
link in Darwin's chain. Follow it now somewhat in detail.

When rain was withheld for some months in South Amer-
ica, Darwin saw thousands of animals die for lack of water ;
yet there is such variety in the power of animals to endure

60 THE NEXT GENERATION

thirst, that some did not die. When food failed for birds in
snow-covered Ohio during the winter of 1913, farmers found
many of them dead in the frozen fields ; yet there is such
difference in the power of birds to endure hunger for longer
or shorter periods, and such variety in their ability to hunt for
food, that many of them did not die.

In 1885, when typhoid microbes found their way into the
water supply of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, noo men, women,
and children had the fever and were threatened with death ;
but there is such a difference in the power of individuals to
resist disease that, although 1 1 4 persons . died, 986 of those
who were ill did not die, and hundreds of others who had used
the same contaminated water were not even affected by it.1

When seven men offered themselves for the yellow-fever
tests in Cuba in 1900, all were bitten by mosquitoes loaded
with blood from yellow-fever victims. But even against this
disease there is a difference in the power of the body to pro-
tect itself. One man escaped with no touch of the fever
whatever, six were ill with it, and one man died.2

Many other cases might be cited of persons who, overtaken
by calamity, have escaped death because they had some power
of endurance which those who died lacked.

IV. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 3

We are now within sight of the fourth link of Darwin's
chain. He says that, because of the universal law of variation,

1 Described in "Town and City," of the Gulick Hygiene Series, p. 107.

2 Described in " Town and City," pp. 234—235.

3 Darwin first called this the law of natural selection, meaning that the
selecting was done without man's help ; but some people misunderstood
his meaning, so he adopted the phrase survival of the fittest, which Herbert
Spencer used. It means precisely the same thing as natural selection, is
easy to understand, and is the term in common use to-day.

FIVE LINKS TO THE CHAIN 61

some members of each species are different enough from the
others to survive in spite of threatened destruction. In other
words, he tells us that it is the fit who survive. This, then, is
the fourth link to the growing chain.

See how this law works itself out. Some creatures have
longer legs and are therefore better fitted than their mates to
run away when danger threatens. Some have stronger claws
with which to kill the foe before being killed themselves.
Some have keener eyesight with which to discover danger
or to sight it from a distance and to escape it. Some have
keener scent with which to trace both food and danger. Some
can live longer than others when deprived of water. Some can
survive a famine where others die in the midst of it.

Thus, in one way and another, in every group of animals,
when the critical moment comes, certain individuals are better
fitted to survive than are their neighbors. This does on no
account mean that the fittest are always the largest, the
tallest, the keenest-eyed, the bravest, the strongest, or the
longest-legged. Certainly not. The huge animals of South
America were bigger than any of those that crowded them
out ; English sparrows of the United States are smaller than
bluebirds, swallows, robins, the purple martin, and other birds
that please us ; but the smaller sparrow attacks the larger
birds, takes up their nesting places, destroys their eggs, and
finally succeeds in driving them from our villages.

During heavy storms it is the birds with small bodies and
strong legs and wings that survive, while birds with large
bodies and small wings die in greatest numbers.

Judging by appearance, certain animals — the donkey, for
example — were better fitted to survive when their ears were
large. It was different with moles. Living and working
underground as they did, ears were a nuisance ; they got in

62 THE NEXT GENERATION

the way. For this reason those with the smallest ears were
best fitted to survive, and now we have the modern mole
with ears so small that they are not worthy of mention. The
change has come about gradually, step by step, through the
laws of variation, the struggle for existence, and the survival
of the fittest. Nevertheless, none of these laws would be of
the slightest value from one generation to the next without
that supreme law which forms the fifth and final link to
Darwin's chain.

V. HEREDITY

The mere mention of this word carries us back to the first
chapters of the book. It calls to mind Andalusian fowls and
guinea pigs. It reminds us of all that inheritance does for
the next generation and the next, when man selects ancestors
and decides to bring about definite changes in animal de-
scendants. But remember that Darwin was searching for
laws which control the destiny of all descendants, whether
their ancestors are selected by man or not.

No human power ever chose the ancestors of the wild
animals of to-day. Nevertheless, Darwin believed that these
same ancestors were selected relentlessly by the five laws
which controlled their fate — prodigality, the struggle for
existence, variation, survival of the fittest, heredity. He be-
lieved that all creatures that live to-day are what they are
because the laws of nature chose their ancestors for them.

Now connect the five links and apply the chain to last
year's codfish. By the law of prodigality, thousands upon
thousands of eggs were laid. Most of these were destroyed
before hatching time came. After hatching, the struggle for
existence began. By the law of variation these young cod-
fish differed from one another as they continued the struggle.
By the law of survival of the fittest only those who were

FIVE LINKS TO THE CHAIN 63

most fit to survive were able to hold to life long enough to
become ancestors. By the law of heredity the characters
of those that did survive were passed on to their codfish
descendants.

Scientists are still discussing Darwin's chain. Some put
trfe emphasis on this link, some on that, but all agree in
his claim that, even as all kinds of pigeons are descended
from the same original ancestor, so too are all kinds of fish
descended from their original ancestor, all kinds of birds
from theirs, all mammals from theirs, and so on through the
entire list.

With one accord, indeed, scientists of to-day accept Dar-
win's conclusion that, from the beginning of time until now,
laws of nature have controlled the changing forms of life ;
that each living creature of to-day is joined by close connec-
tion to its ancestors of the past ; that living creatures both
of the past and of the present move through the ages as a
procession marching in lock step, and that every form of life
is linked to distant ancestors by an endless chain of cause
and effect.

Through Darwin's discoveries we see that creative power
has raised a structure of life on the earth which is welded
together from foundation to summit. The evidences of this
evolution are about us on every hand, and the next chapter
points out a few of them.

CHAPTER X
EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION

Watch swimming fish in any pond or aquarium ; even
goldfish in a glass jar will answer the purpose. Notice those
two small flaps, one on each side of the head. See them open
and shut, and open and shut again, with never-failing regu-
larity. They cover what are known as the gill-slits. These

DOGFISH WITH GILL-SLITS WHERE THE ARROWS POINT

slits open out from the gills, and gills are the breathing
apparatus of the fish.1

Notice also that the mouth of the fish is open, too, and that,
although he seems to be swallowing mouthful after mouthful
of water, he really gets nothing to eat. The truth is, he is
simply breathing with his mouth open. If he should shut his
mouth and keep it shut, he would die of suffocation. To keep
alive he needs oxygen as much as we do, and the only way
he can get it is by taking water into his mouth and sending

1 Blood which circulates in the membranes of the gills takes oxygen from
water which passes over them, just as blood which circulates in the mem-
branes of lung cells takes oxygen from the air which enters the lungs.

EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 65

it out again through his gills within his gill-slits. As the
water passes along, the red-blood corpuscles in the gills take
out all the oxygen they need.

When fish are drawn out of water and left on land, they die
because they cannot get oxygen from the water in their usual
way, through their gills. When we are held under water, we
die because we cannot get oxygen from the air in our usual
way, through the lungs.

Since this is the case, zoologists 1 expected to find gill-
slits in embryo2 fish, and lungs in the embryos of animals
that take their oxygen directly from the air. Imagine, then,
the surprise of these men when they found gill-slits and
lungs too in the embryo of all vertebrates, whether they were
fish or not.

Birds that are to live in trees and never swim, mice and
men, monkeys and elephants, snakes and bats and vertebrate
beasts of every sort — all these have gill-slits in the neck
during the embryo stage. At the same time those that are
to breathe air after birth have embryo lungs too.

And this is not all. Even in Darwin's day the bodies of
animals held other mysteries which no man could explain.
It was well known that full-grown whales have rudiments 3 of
hind legs concealed under the flesh ; that embryo whales
have rudimentary teeth, although no grown whale has ever
been known to have a tooth in his head ; that the python and
the boa have rudiments of legs never used, never desired ;
that calves before they are born have beginnings of front teeth
in the upper jaw which never cut through the gums after
birth. Notice that no cow has front teeth on the upper jaw.

1 A zoologist is a student of animal life.

2 Before birth a creature is called an embryo.

8 A rudiment is the beginning or foundation of any part or organ.

66 THE NEXT GENERATION

The list might be made still longer. But no one explained
these rudiments of legs, teeth, gill-slits, etc. until Darwin
came with his five-linked chain and his proofs. He said that
through millions of years unused parts of the body become
more and more inefficient, until, in course of time, they have
no power left.

To prove this, think of the ancestral horse and his useless
toes. Think of the fish in the dark recesses of Mammoth
Cave, Kentucky. They are blind, but they have rudiments
of eyes.

Parasites in particular show the same degeneration from
lack of use. One of the most extraordinary among these is
the sacculina, as described by Dr. David Starr Jordan.

It begins life by looking very much like a young crab.
Both creatures have feelers, swimming apparatus, eyes,
heart, brain, etc. But soon a change sets in. The crab, on
the one hand, goes on developing. Feelers grow longer,
brain grows bigger, eyes continue active, the heart never
stops beating. In other words, the crab keeps active in every
part and grows as it should. Not so with the sacculina.
Soon after birth it fastens itself to the body of any conven-
ient crab and stays there the rest of its life. It first sends a
slender feeler down into the blood stream of the crab. This
feeler lengthens each day like a ramifying root. At the same
time branches of the root grow in this direction and that until
they have entered the entire system of crab blood vessels.
And as they ramify, they draw up from the blood of the crab
all the nourishment the sacculina needs. Feelers have there-
fore no work to do in hunting for food. Eyes are needed
no longer. Heart and brain cease to serve. As a result they
disappear, one after the other, until the sacculina finds itself
nothing but a sac fastened to the body of the crab — a sac

EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION

with root processes and reproductive organs. Everything else
is gone, and, as the illustration shows, the parasite finally
looks more like a growth of the crab itself than like a sepa-
rate creature. The sacculina lives as long as the crab lives,
and when the crab dies, it must die too.

Now this record is simply an illustration of the result of
disuse. Somewhat the same thing happens in other animals.

SACCULINA ON THE ABDOMEN OF A CRAB

Notice how the root processes of this parasite ramify through the legs and
the body of the crab. (Adapted from Parker and Haswell)

In many cases, however, unused parts remain as mere rudi-
ments through later generations. Darwin makes three state-
ments concerning this whole matter, which may be condensed
as follows :

1 . All organs degenerate by disuse.

2. As any race of animals grows more and more success-
ful in the struggle for existence, it develops new organs and

68 THE NEXT GENERATION

may stop using old ones. If it stops using any part of its
body, that part may be inherited as a rudiment.

3. The embryo of many vertebrates tells by its different
parts what the history of the evolution of its ancestors has ,
been.

For example, when we find rudimentary teeth in the front
upper jaw of an embryo calf, we know that once upon a time
the ancestors of this calf had well-developed upper front teeth
and used them for chewing. When we find rudimentary
legs hidden under the flesh of full-grown whales, we know
that, in the ages of the past, whale ancestors used legs instead
of fins for locomotion.

So, too, with gill-slits. When we find rudiments of these in
any embryo, we know that somewhere back in bygone ages
the ancestors of this particular embryo lived in water and
breathed through gill-slits.

Evidently, then, each rudiment is nothing less than a
signboard — a reminder of the road by which developing
creatures have traveled from the past to the present. Each
is a so-called ancestral reminiscence. Each declares that
in the struggle for existence this organ or that had to be
given up, and that other organs were developed instead.

Our modern whale tells the story of a double change. To-
day he is a queer combination — a mammal that lives in
water and uses lungs for breathing. But his rudimentary
legs and his rudimentary teeth prove that at some time in
the past his ancestors were out-and-out land animals that
roamed the fields on sturdy legs and used good-sized teeth
for chewing.

Also, by his embryonic gill-slits the same whale tells us
that even before he was a land animal his ancestors were
water animals with gill-slits for their breathing apparatus.

EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION

At the present time every whale in every ocean uses
lungs and not gills when he breathes. Nevertheless, as a
reminder of the ancient road which their ancestors traveled,
every embryo of every whale has the double outfit — lungs
and gill-slits too.

Thus it is that rudiments repeat over and over again the
long-drawn history of whale life. They show how the struggle
for existence drove some early ancestors first from water to
land, then back again from land to water. Scientists say that

RORQUAL, THE GIANT OF THE ARCTIC SEAS

One of these whales, captured on the British coast, measured 95 feet in length
and weighed 249 tons

by learning how to live in one environment after another, as
they did, whales have shown that they were better fitted to
survive than many of their fellow monsters who perished
in the struggle. And all this lends a glow of romance to our
modern whale, yet he himself is as indifferent as if no line
of struggling ancestors had made him what he is.

For the sake of studying the evidences of evolution in
close relation to each other, they are now summarized in five
separate statements.

70 THE NEXT GENERATION

1 . Structural evidence derived from the form and general
make-up of animals. It is often found in rudimentary bones
and organs — leg bones of the whale, for example, toe bones
of the horse, etc. Darwin himself was thinking of structural
evidence when he wrote, ' ' What can be more curious than that
the hand of man, formed for grasping, the leg of the horse,
the paddle of the porcupine, and the wing of the bat, should
all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include
the same bones in the same relative position."

2. Embryological evidence. This includes such rudiments
as are found in the embryo alone — gill-slits, for example.
Without this important embryological evidence we should
not so much as suspect that in early ages all vertebrates
lived in the water.

3. Geological evidence gathered from fossil bones etc.
This gives us the pedigree of the horse back to his five-toed
ancestors, and shows what kind of creatures lived on the earth
before man himself arrived.

4. Geographical evidence. This shows that creatures which
are most alike are found nearest together.

5. Experimental evidence. Man gets this for himself
when he chooses different varieties and breeds new species
of animals.

Taken all together, these five kinds of evidence prove that
at some time in the past all vertebrates were very much more
alike than their descendants are to-day ; and, as we have seen,
these present differences are the result of the combined action
of environment and heredity1. The two, working together,
have caused such specialization along different lines that we
now have many different types of vertebrates. Some of these

1 " By heredity we mean organic resemblance based on descent." —
Castle.

EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 71

live in the air, some live in the water, and some, as ourselves,
live on land.

And throughout the history of it all we see that in every
case it was the fittest ancestors that were able to change their
habits of life, able to save themselves from extinction when the

THE LUNGFISH THAT LIVES BOTH ON LAND AND IN THE WATER

In 1913 this fish was sent alive from the Gambia region of Africa to the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City. It came "coiled up in a kind of
cocoon, deeply sunken in a large clod of earth which months before had been the
bottom of a stream." There was an opening through the clod so that air reached
the fish. This kind of fish " breathes by means of gills when in the water, but with
a lung during the summer drought, inhaling and exhaling air as if it were a land-
living animal." In its degree of development it belongs with fossil fish that lived
millions of years ago, because it is a transitional type — a water animal that is be-
coming a land animal. The fish died soon after reaching New York, and its body
is preserved in the Museum

struggle was on, and able to pass certain kinds of characters
on to the next generation.

Thus it is that each generation takes its part in changing
the history of later generations. But this is not all. The next
chapter introduces another side of the subject. It shows what
the difference is between characters that can be passed on and
characters which can never be passed on by inheritance.

CHAPTER XI
ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND MUTATIONS

A young mother expressed the greatest disappointment
over the fact that her daughter was not musical.

" I simply cannot understand it," she exclaimed. " Before
the child was born I spent hours every day practicing the
piano, because I was determined to have at least one musical
person in the family. Does n't science say that we can stamp
our children this way or that before they are born ? I have
proved that we can't."

" Has she no musical ability whatever ? " I asked.

" None at all," was the answer ; " neither have I ; neither
has her father. That's precisely why I practiced so. I was
trying to help the family out. I wanted to put musical power
into it."

"And you failed ? " I asked.

" Absolutely," was the answer.

" The trouble was with your own lack of information," I
continued. She looked surprised, but I gave her no time to
speak. "The process of evolution proves that we stamp our
children according to what we are in ourselves, not accord-
ing to what we make ourselves do. The doing is n't going to
stamp children before they are born ; it is the being that does
it. Is n't your daughter rather persistent ? "

"Indeed she is," said the woman, looking at me in^as-
tonishment. " She's the most persistent thing you ever saw.
But what gave you the idea ? You have n't even seen her."

ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND MUTATIONS 73

" No," I answered,' " but from your story I see that you
yourself are persistent, not musical. Where was her musical
taste to come from if neither you nor her father had it ?
You mustn't blame her. Laws of nature are responsible."

This true story shows how it is
that uninformed people often expect
to secure what they desire without
any reference to the laws of nature.

For three hundred years and over,
Chinese mothers bound the feet of

CHINESE SHOES Two AND ONE HALF INCHES LONG

The one on the left has been worn ; the one on the right shows how the foot was
bandaged and cramped above the shoe

their young daughters, and from generation to generation
those feet were cramped from girlhood to middle age, old age,
and death. -Surely, if ever an acquired character1 was to be

1 An acquired character is secured by an individual during his own life,
not by inheritance. Professor Weismann was the first scientist to give the
words acquired character their present meaning. He says, " Acquired char-
acters are those which result from external influence upon the organism, in
contrast to such as spring from the constitution of the germ."

74 THE NEXT GENERATION

inherited by oncoming generations of girls, this was the one.
Mothers and grandmothers, great-grandmothers and great-
great-grandmothers, back in direct line through all these
generations, had done what they could to compel Chinese
women to have small feet. And what success did they have ?
Each baby born in each generation had as perfect feet as
if no ancestral bones had ever been deformed. Moreover,
when those feet were allowed to grow, they became as large
and well shaped as if there never had been any foot-binding
in China.

This illustrates the fate of acquired characters. Facts show
that they are not passed on. A woman may crimp her hair
from the cradle to the grave, but unless she marries a man
with curly hair, or unless there has been curly hair some-
where back in the ancestry of the father or the mother, she
will not succeed in giving curly hair to her children or to her
children's children.

Other characters are acquired, too. Eyes that have been
weakened through overstrain ; hands calloused through rough
work ; faces tanned through exposure ; firm or flabby muscles ;
bent or straight backs ; stiff or limber joints — these and many
others are acquired characters. They can never reach the next
generation through inheritance.

In the flower gardens of Japan there are trees so dwarfed
by human art that orange, pine, and plum are in full bloom
and bearing fruit when they are no more than a foot high.
Judging from appearances, these trees are a race by them-
selves, and one would expect to find nothing but dwarfs
among their descendants. But, strange to say, no seed of a
tree that was dwarfed ever grows into a dwarfed descendant.
Each successive generation has to be crippled and deformed
and compelled to stay small by the aid of man.

ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND MUTATIONS 75

Dogs and sheep and horses in England have had their
tails cut off for very many generations. Yet each pup, colt,
and lamb born of these tail-docked ancestors has as normal
a tail as if its ancestors had never endured any amputation.
The acquired character of short tail has never been passed
on and never will be.

With such facts in mind we naturally ask how short-tailed
cats came into existence, and how it is that such cats are able
to pass on the short-tailed character. A series of rather star-
tling facts points the
way to a probable
answer. They deal
with what are called
mutations. In more
ordinary language a
mutation is referred
to as a sport, and a
sport might be de-
scribed as a living
novelty which cannot
be explained by its
ancestors.

To illustrate this :
In Paraguay, in the

midst of an ordinary herd of long-horned cattle there appeared
one day a young bull born without horns. This was in 1 770.
Not an ancestor of that small animal had been hornless, yet
until he died he remained as hornless as when he was born.
He was a mutation — a sport.

An animal without horns is so easy to manage that this
one pleased his owners, and they wished to have others like
him. But as he was the only one of his kind, his pairing had

FULL-GROWN JAPANESE PINE TREE
Dwarfed by human skill

THE NEXT GENERATION

to be done with ordinary horned mates. The results were
unexpected certainly, and the owners were astonished. So
many of his descendants had no horns that in the course
of time there was established a race of hornless cattle from

horned ancestors.

Darwin tells us that
short-legged Ancon sheep
started in the same way
—that in a herd of long-
legged sheep there ap-
peared one day this one
little lamb with short legs ;
that it lived to grow up
and become an ancestor ;
that among its own de-
scendants there were sev-
eral short-legged sheep.
These could not jump
fences and escape from
the fold ; therefore sheep
raisers selected them as
ancestors of succeeding
generations. As a result,
short-legged sheep are
now the chosen type.
They are found the world over, and appreciated everywhere.
Mr. Poulton describes a family of cats with an extra toe.
The first one came as a mutation. After this, for seven gen-
erations of that family, the feet of all the kittens and cats were
faithfully examined, and, by actual count, the majority of them
were found to be supplied with one or two extra toes, making
six or seven toes on each foot.

A CASE OF POLYDACTYLISM

The boy's father had twelve fingers and twelve
toes, but the fin-gers were boneless. (Photo-
graph by Professor Scott.) (From " Heredity in
Relation to Eugenics," by C.B. Davenport)

ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND MUTATIONS 77

From one point of view this is a calamity even for cats.
Think, then, of the misfortune it is for human beings ! Yet
such cases are on record. Professor Scott gives the photo-
graph of a boy who began life with six fingers on each hand
and six toes on each foot. His father had had the same num-
ber. One of his brothers had extra toes, another brother had
extra toes with one extra finger on his left hand, a sister had

RADIOGRAPH OF NORMAL AND ABNORMAL HAND

Notice that one ha

(Photograph by Drinkwater.) (F

.nd has three joints to each finger, while the other has but two.
Drinkwater.) (From " Mendel's Principles of Heredity," by
W. Bateson)

extra toes only, while five brothers and sisters had perfectly
natural hands and feet. The condition of having too many
fingers is called polydactylism.

Besides this there is brachydactylism. The word itself means
" short-fingeredness." All we know about the following case is
that the woman had two joints instead of three joints to each
finger. She married a man with perfectly normal, three-
jointed fingers. They had eleven children, and facts are known

78 THE NEXT GENERATION

about eight of them. Among these, as the diagram shows,
four had short fingers and four had normal fingers.

Study the diagram and see that in the next generation there
were seven short-fingered persons and five that were normal.

? ?

9 t 9 cf

7 9 f ? <? ?

^9 9?

IAA

BRACHYDACTYLISM THROUGH FIVE GENERATIONS

The family lived in Pennsylvania, and, as Dr. Castle states, " in no case was an ab-
normal member of the family known to have married any but an unrelated normal
individual." Notice, however, that about half of the descendants were afflicted with
brachydactylism. (From " Heredity," by W. E. Castle)

/--, Male and female respectively, not possessing the trait under
» consideration.

A Male and female possessing the trait.

•-»
Unknown sex, normal or affected.

Neither presence nor absence of trait can be affirmed.

(A) Indicates number of children.

Marriage.

SYMBOLS USED IN PEDIGREES
(As adopted by the Galton Eugenics Laboratory)

ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND MUTATIONS 79

The printed record of the family stops with the fifth gen-
eration, but out in the world, where the descendants of those
people continue to live and to multiply, the misfortune of
their fingers still goes on, and the number of those who
have this misfortune increases with each generation

SMITH AND NORWELL'S CASE SHOWING POLYDACTYLISM
(From the " Treasury of Human Inheritance ")

We see, then, that a character which begins as a mutation l
marches on through the generations without any regard to

1 In 1885 Professor Hugo de Vries of Holland came upon an astonish-
ing primrose plant. It grew in a deserted potato field near Amsterdam,
and it had many unexpected descendants. Among these " some had few
branches instead of many ; some had small flowers instead of large ; some
had quite different leaves, and so on." Every now and then, also, a prim-
rose hybrid would have descendants quite like itself, and the new charac-
ters would go on from one generation to the next without change. A new
species had come unannounced into the field, and it was able to stay there
because it had descendants like itself. De Vries found many such cases
among his primrose plants, and it was he who first called them mutations.
The word is now used by all who study the laws of evolution.

80 THE NEXT GENERATION

the wishes of those who suffer from it or of those who are
blessed by it. And this points the difference between a
mutation and an acquired character.

An acquired character cannot be inherited ; a mutation is
inherited. The difference between the two is striking. And
this explains why mutations have done so much for past gen-
erations of living creatures, for if a mutation gave its owner
any advantage in the struggle for existence, — if it made the
creature in the least degree more fit to survive,. — through
the law of inheritance it was sure to play an important part
in changing succeeding generations of descendants.

No mutations have taught plainer lessons than do those
which Dr. Tower brought about among his American potato
bugs. These are discussed in the thirteenth and fourteenth
chapters. Just now, however, we turn to the law of isolation
as it is illustrated by snail shells on the Hawaiian Islands.

CHAPTER XII
ISOLATION; OR LAND SHELLS ON HAWAII

Imagine yourself on the Hawaiian Islands,1 in 1852. You
are on horseback, on the island of Oahu, riding from valley

THE ISLAND OF OAHU

to valley, hunting for land shells. Your guide is an en-
thusiastic young American student.

1 The Hawaiian Islands take their name from the largest island of the
group. They are of volcanic origin, lie just within the tropics, and are
2500 miles from San Francisco. Because of their great beauty they are
called The Paradise of the Pacific.

82 THE NEXT GENERATION

Look under the trees as he does ; examine the trunks, the
branches, the leaves. You will find snail shells clinging in
each place. Notice their variety, their shape, their location.
Some are almost an inch long ; others are so small that it
takes five to measure one inch. Some are fragile as the frailest
china ; others are stout enough to endure rough handling.

In color they run all the way from bright green and yel-
low to the softest shades of brown, with touches of blue and
pink and white. Indeed, in coloring, no gems could be more
lovely.

The island of Oahu is forty-six miles long and twenty-
five miles wide. A mountain range stretches through it
from northwest to southeast. Wooded valleys trail downward
from this central mountain range. These valleys are very
narrow, very deep, and close together.' Here it was that, in
1852, John Gulick gathered his snail shells and found that
on Oahu alone there are between two and three hundred
species of the same family of snails.

Some lived on the ground ; some were on the under side
of the leaves of low shrubs ; some on the broad branches of
the kukui tree. Others lived in sunlight on the ridges be-
tween the higher parts of the valleys, while still others always
stayed in the damp, shaded forests of the valleys. And the
special point to bear in mind is, that from generation to gen-
eration each species stayed where it started. It never left
its special tree, shrub, or rock unless it was carried away by
windstorm or by birds.

At the very time that John Gulick gathered his shells, he
did the one thing which made his whole collection priceless
afterwards. He not only found old shells and labeled them,
found new shells and gave them names, but he also made
careful note of the exact place where each separate shell had

ISOLATION; OR LAND SHELLS ON HAWAII 83

been found — whether in this valley or that ; whether on
this kind of tree, on that variety of 'shrub, or under leaves
on the ground. He was indeed doing what scientists now
insist must always be done to make a collection of any value
from the scientific point of view. In those days, however,
and in that distant land, John Gulick was the only person
who so much as dreamed of doing this careful work.

A FEW OF DR. GULICK'S SHELLS

i, yellow-white with a tinge of green and dark stripes ; 2, soft yellow with white
lining ; 3, red-brown with white stripes and white lining ; 4, shaded pink with white
bands and white lip ; 5, dark brown, light brown, and white ; 6, dark green shaded
light, with bands of dark brown and yellow ; 7, white inside and outside, with touch
of yellow on the lip ; 8, dark red-brown, shaded, with darker bands and white lining

" I was so much interested in the location," he says, " that
I kept the name of every valley. I went around the island
on horseback, starting at Koko Head and visiting all the
valleys in turn. The shells were actually found by the Ha-
waiian boys. I would ride into a valley and tell the boys that
I would come in a few days and pay them for the land shells
they found, but I knew the valley where they came from."

84 THE NEXT GENERATION

He also saw that in the same valley, on separate trees,
there were often several varieties of the same species. In
one case he even found fifteen different species of the same
genus in five neighboring valleys ; and these valleys were so
small that, altogether, the ground they covered was less than
five miles long by two miles wide.

All this perplexed him. And although he bought and
read Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle," it gave him no
help.1

As he continued to gather his shells, to study them, and
to label them, he constantly looked for points that were alike
and for points that were unlike. And in doing this he no-
ticed that species which lived closest together, on the same
trees or in the same valley, were very much alike.

He then arranged his shells according to the exact spot
they came from. And now he saw that the nearer together
they were, the more alike ; the farther apart, the more unlike.
These various facts led him to ask himself two questions :

1 . Why should so many species have been created so near
to each other ? 2

2. Why should there be such an extraordinary number of
short steps between the different species ?

While he asked these questions and puzzled his wits for
answers, John Gulick little thought that those treasured shells
of his were destined to travel back and forth to America and
round the world with him ; that he was to talk with Darwin
himself about them ; and that, in the end, his own answer
to his own questions was to help solve the great problem of
evolution. Yet all this came to pass.

1 The " Origin of Species " was not written until years later.

2 In those days men believed _that each species was created independ-
ently of all the others.

ISOLATION; OR LAND SHELLS ON HAWAII 85

In 1872, twenty years after his shells were gathered,
Dr. Gulick wrote out the answers to his questions.

He said that on the Hawaiian Islands nature had acted
like a careful breeder. It had kept certain groups from mating
with other groups, even when they lived very near together.
And he shows how this was managed, step by step, from
the beginning.

1. After these volcanic islands had been formed, a few
snails drifted to them from elsewhere.

2. These first snails multiplied where they were and, since
they were wretched travelers, they stayed in the same place
for numberless generations.

3. In the course of time a few were carried off by birds,
or by wind or flood, or on a broken branch, and left in
another part of the same valley, or perhaps on the top of a
neighboring tree.

4. These snails stayed where they were dropped ; they
multiplied in their new home and had no chance whatever to
mate with the parent stock or with any other snails in any
other place. For this reason each new group of descendants
became slightly different from its own immediate ancestors,
and more different yet from all the other ancestors farther
back. It became different because it started with a different
average.

To make this last statement plain, imagine seven birds
with beaks as long as shown in the illustration on the next
page. Also imagine that two of the birds flew off to a new
locality. Now notice the difference in the average length of
the beaks in the two groups.

The same law of average holds true with snails. When a
few of these are swept away from the original group, the
average size or shape of this new, smaller group is sure to

THE NEXT GENERATION

be different from the average size and shape of the first
group, and in general it is the average that shows itself in
the descendants of each new colony.

2 in.

FIRST GROUP
Average length of beaks in this group is two inches *

3 m.

SECOND GROUP
Average length of beaks in this group is two and one half inches 1

This, then, explains the short steps that sprang up, one
from the other, among the snails of Hawaii. There is an
extraordinary number of varieties and species, for two
reasons :

1 The average is found by adding all the lengths together and dividing
the sum by the number of beaks.

ISOLATION; OR LAND SHELLS ON HAWAII 87

1. Because the snails were blown along or moved along
in short stages.

2. Because each colony was permanently separated from
all the other colonies, and because each had its own
average.

Let colony after colony be started in this way, let time go
on for unnumbered snail generations, and we should expect
to find precisely what we do find — a series of colonies sepa-
rated from each other by short steps of difference. Then,
too, we should expect to find that the nearer they are to
each other, the more alike they will be ; the farther apart, the
more unlike. This also is what has happened to snail shells
on Hawaii.

Dr. Gulick brings these facts out and says that any sepa-
ration which prevents one colony from mating with another
colony is rightly called isolation. He speaks of geographic
isolation, when snails in one valley or on one tree have no
chance to mate with snails in another valley or on another
tree, or when snails that live under stones never meet those
that live on tree tops. He speaks of food isolation, when dif-
ferent groups live on different kinds of food ; and he assures
us that anything which keeps colonies permanently apart, so
that mating is impossible, means isolation for them. He
also says that genuine isolation of this sort results at last in
a new species.

This was Dr. Gulick's discovery. By means of it he added
the law of isolation to Darwin's five-linked chain, and by
doing this he made the chain itself so much the stronger.

Human beings as well as snails, plants as well as animals,
are controlled by the same law of isolation. The next chap-
ter will show that colonies which mix freely with each other
have the smallest number of species.

CHAPTER XIII

CHANGED ENVIRONMENT FOR LEPTINOTARSA

Kansas will never forget the year 1862. Potato bugs had
arrived. They were crossing the state, destroying the crops
and driving the farmers to despair. One afflicted man wrote

to the editor of the Val-
ley Farmer about it :

" I cultivate about ten
acres of land," he says,
" for the purpose of rais-
ing potatoes for my
hotel ; it is situated on
the prairie land. Last
August, soon after a
heavy shower of rain,
these bugs suddenly
made th'eir appearance
in large numbers on the
potato vines. They were
so numerous that in
many instances they
would almost cover the
whole vine. It is no ex-
aggeration when I tell

you that we have often, in a very short time, gathered as many
as two bushels of them. When cold weather set in, they
disappeared. Early this spring I was setting out some apple

LEPTINOTARSA DECEMLINEATA, THE
TRAVELER

Color, yellow with black stripes ; length, about
one third of an inch

ENVIRONMENT FOR LEPTINOTARSA 89

trees, and away down in the hard, yellow clay I found these
bugs, apparently dead, but put them in the sun and they im-
mediately came to life. They have again made their appear-
ance in my garden in large numbers. Last year they ate up
everything green on the potato vines, then commenced on
the tomatoes, and so on, eating up everything green."

It seems that the ancestors of these beetles had moved up
by short stages from Mexico to Nebraska ; that on the way
they ate certain plants that pleased them, but that they knew
nothing about potatoes until they reached Omaha City in
1859. And here it was that they had their first taste of what
seemed to them a delicious new food.

They crawled over the potato leaves, nibbled at them, and
liked them so well that, ever after, wherever the farmer went,
planting his potatoes, there too went the potato-bug beetle
to enjoy them. Everywhere the beetle destroyed the crops,
and everywhere the farmer did what he could to destroy
the beetle.

It was a hand-to-hand fight, and the record of it is given
by Dr. Tower in what he calls " The Chronological His-
tory of the Dispersal of Leptinotarsa decemlineata, 1859
to 1904." *

This record shows how the beetles worked their way from
west to east, how long they took for the journey, and how
they earned for themselves the nickname of potato bug.
Their real name — their scientific name — is Leptinotarsa
decemlineata, a name too long for everyday use but quite
important to the scientist.

Here are a few extracts quoted from the record of the
travels of Leptinotarsa decemlineata.

1 This is one division of Dr. Tower's book entitled " Evolution in
Chrysomelid Beetles."

90 THE NEXT GENERATION

1864. " The beetle has. crossed the Mississippi River into
Illinois at several points. ... It is committing the most destruc-
tive ravages on the potato crop in the vicinity of Warsaw,
Illinois, but it has not yet reached a point lying thirty miles
east of us in such numbers as to be noticed by the farmers."

1865. If reports are correct, "the insect has traveled
three hundred and sixty miles in six years. At this rate it
will reach the Atlantic in fourteen years (i.e. 1879)."

1868. A few advance agents of the moving army appeared
in Ohio. The army itself was still one hundred miles to the
rear but coming steadily on. Dr. Tower says that this advance
guard, no doubt, traveled by accident on the coal barges which
passed up and down the Ohio River. They were blown onto
these barges while on the wing.

l8jl. " The chief event of the history of this year's
spread is the invasion of Canada." A man describing the
way they travel writes : "In the spring the Detroit River
was swarming with the beetles, and they were crossing Lake
Erie on ships, chips, staves, and any floating object."

1874. " The center of the interest was along the Atlantic
coast, where in many places the beetle was abundant and
did much damage."

/c?75. " At the beginning of this year the beetle was dis-
tributed along the seacoast from New York to Chesapeake
Bay, and by the end it had overrun most of the remaining
territory of the coast states. It reached Boston, Massachu-
setts, in the autumn. It penetrated farther into Vermont
and was reported from New Hampshire and Maine."

l8j6. "It is related that they were washed ashore in
such numbers as to poison the air with the ' noxious vapors '
arising from their decaying bodies." The captain of a New
London vessel relates that while at sea (Long Island Sound)

ENVIRONMENT FOR LEPTINOTARSA 91

they " boarded him in such numbers that the hatches had to
be closed. . . . They were abundant everywhere and by the
end of the year had overrun the entire northern and eastern
part of the United States, excepting Maine."

Sometimes the masses moved faster, sometimes slower,
but always they went forward. Like the Israelites of old,
they lived and journeyed and died as they traveled.

MAP OF THE UNITED STATES AND LOWER CANADA

This shows the chief trends of migration of Leptinotarsa decemlineata between
1859 and 1904. (After W. L. Tower)

It took sixteen years for them to go from Omaha to Boston.
Meanwhile every European nation watched the progress of
the army and grew anxious. If beetles could cross the
Mississippi River, if they could span Lake Erie and
reach Canada, what was to hinder them from taking ship
for Europe ? What was to save that side of the ocean
from the beetle raids of this side, and what should be done
as preparation for the possibility of such an invasion ?

92 THE NEXT GENERATION

Different governments asked themselves these questions
as they watched the steady advance of the tireless travelers.
Fortunately Europe knew how to save herself. Her weapon
was scientific information about the beetle itself, about its
power to eat all sorts of green and growing things, and about
the way it travels. Full directions were given as to what
must be done at once if any beetle showed itself in Europe.

In Germany schoolmasters taught the facts to the chil-
dren in the schools and gave public lectures to older people.
France printed an elaborate bulletin for everybody to read.

Then, in 1876, came the expected test. Beetles had ar-
rived. They had crossed the Atlantic by ship from America.
They were found in England, Sweden, and Norway. But,
thanks to the bulletins, the school-teachers, and the children,
people recognized them at once, captured them, and killed
them. Science saved the country then and will keep on saving
it so long as the people are vigilant. But what if vigilance
should let go ?

Dr. Tower says that " when this happens, the beetle will
spread as it did in this country, until it is found in all the
countries of Europe in which it is possible to live."

Such is the meager outline of the history of the migration
of the potato bug from Omaha in the west to Europe in the
east ; and it points the lesson of environment. By what they
did these beetles proved that they could live in any surround-
ings where they could find food enough.

It mattered ftot whether the place was hot or cold, damp
or dry, covered by shadows or exposed to sunshine ; whether
it were on a mountain top, on a wide plain, or in a valley.
Nothing mattered to the beetles except their food. Wherever
there was food enough, there they multiplied fastest; and
where they multiplied fastest, there they provided the largest

ENVIRONMENT FOR LEPTINOTARSA 93

numbers to be moved onward or to be blown forward as
accident might dictate.

Still they were neither eating nor traveling all the time.
Dr. Tower says that most beetles spend from three to five
months a year underground in a state of torpor, taking no
part in life's activities. But when spring comes and the
days are warm, then new life drives them aboveground
again. They now creep and fly about and fall to eating
spring leaves that are beginning to grow. It is at this time
that the farmer is in despair. He cries, "The bugs are upon
us!" He arms himself to defeat them. He picks them from
the vines by the peckful and the bushel. He puts Paris
green on the vines to kill the marauders. He digs long
trenches across their pathway, waits until hundreds of thou-
sands of them have fallen into these trenches, pours kero-
sene oil in after them, touches a match to it, and in a flash of
light the beetles have been conquered. No beetle can survive
an environment of P5aris green or of fire. Man must therefore
meet him with these weapons if he wishes to save his crops.

Now compare the snails of Hawaii with the potato bugs of
America, and keep in sight the following facts :

1. On Oahu, an island forty-six miles long and twenty-
five miles wide, there are between two and three hundred
species of one great family of snails. In North America, in
all the area of the Northern states and of Canada, there is
but one species of potato bug.

2. On Oahu each species of snail must have its own kind
of food, else it will die. In America potato bugs live on
fifteen or twenty different kinds of plants.

3. Hawaiian snails move by creeping, and they do this
slowly. American potato bugs not only creep but also walk
and fly and are blown forward by the wind.

94 THE NEXT GENERATION

4. The region covered by a single species of Hawaiian
snail is often not over two or three square miles. The region
covered by a single species of potato bug is as wide and as
long as the continent of North America.

These facts, put together in this way, show that the power
to migrate and to live in different kinds of environment has
much to do with the number of species in this region or that.
If potato bugs had been, kept in narrow sections of the coun-
try, if they had been able to live on but one kind of food,

LKPTINOTARSA LARVAE

The dark one is bright red ; the light one is bright yellow. Both are decorated

with black spots, both help destroy the crops, and both will be changed into flying

beetles. (From W. L. Tower)

if colonies had gone out from them rarely and at long inter-
vals, if there had been no chance for different colonies to mix
with each other, the potato bug would have ended by being
divided into many species, as are the snails of Hawaii.

Instead, this potato bug lives in any environment. Neither
soil nor climate daunts him. Storms and blizzards simply
drive him on his way and improve his chances. In spite of
all this, however, there are certain kinds of beetle environ-
ment which make all the difference in the world with his
descendants of succeeding generations. The next chapter
takes up this part of the subject.

CHAPTER XIV
NEW SPECIES THROUGH CHANGED ENVIRONMENT

One of the interesting points about Leptinotarsa decem-
lineata is that they multiply at the rate of two generations
a year. This means that a beetle has both children and
grandchildren within twelve months. Dr. Tower describes
the egg-laying process. It begins in the spring, soon after
the beetles crawl out of their underground burrows.

A convenient leaf is chosen, and the beetle, well laden
with her eggs, begins the serious work of laying from thirty
to seventy-five of them in close succession. First " she al-
lows a drop of yellow, oily fluid to escape " from her body.
Upon this the egg is carefully dropped. ' The fluid now
hardens rapidly and cements the egg in place. One egg hav-
ing been deposited, the female moves along a slight distance,
and there places another by the side of the first, and so on
until there is a row of from five to ten eggs in a nearly straight
line across the leaf. A second, third, fourth, and often as
many as ten rows are thus laid, each of which is more or less
closely placed to the previously laid row, and forms therewith
a compact bunch."

Sometimes, instead of putting all her eggs on the same
leaf, the beetle moves from place to place, leaving a few here
and a few there, until she has deposited the thirty or seventy-
five that are ready to be laid in close succession. Her entire
number is about three hundred and seventy-five, but, as we
have seen, they have to be laid in separate sets during the

96 THE NEXT GENERATION

same season, because they are not all ready to leave the body
at the same time. There are from four to ten days between
the layings of two successive sets of eggs.

After the laying comes the hatching ; and after the hatch-
ing, those young larvae of the next generation eat green things
in abundance and develop so fast that, within thirty-five days
from the time they were eggs, they have not only been
changed into crawling larvae but also have become full-grown
beetles with wings, ready to lay eggs on their own account.

Dr. Tower learned these facts while he studied beetles
and carried on experiments with them in connection with The
University of Chicago. He knew that every kind of beetle
starts from a germ cell,1 and he proposed to do what he could
to find out whether or not the power of germ cells can be
influenced in this direction or that by any change in the
surroundings of the parents before the next generation makes
its appearance.

See how it was in the matter of color, for example.
Dr. Tower first secured forty thousand beetles. These were
sent to him from the potato fields of Massachusetts and Long
Island, also from Ohio and Illinois, and when they reached
Chicago he put them into glass cages and glass breeding
tanks prepared for the purpose.

Each breeding place had its own special degree of heat or
of cold, and each was kept at the same temperature through
summer and through winter from 1893 to 1904. During these
years many generations of beetles lived and died, and all the
time Dr. Tower saw what was happening to the spots and
the stripes that give the creatures their color.

When the eleven years were over, when both heat tests
and cold tests were ended, he found that up to a certain
1 All life starts from germ cells. The next chapter tells of this.

NEW SPECIES 97

point of heat or of cold the color of each next generation of
beetles grew darker and richer, but that when either the heat
or the cold was greater, the color grew lighter from one
generation to the next, until it had quite faded out.

These experiments proved that the temperature of the sur-
roundings in which beetles live and multiply influences the
power of their germ cells to pass on shades of color to the
next generation.

Dr. Tower was in the midst of these experiments when a
serious calamity brought them abruptly to an end. Beetles'
eggs with long pedigrees behind them were in the green-
house waiting to be hatched. Young beetles with pedigrees
quite as long were feeding and growing. Full-grown beetles
were in fine condition. It was one of the hottest days in the
summer of 1904. Workmen were repairing the heating ap-
paratus of the university, and, not knowing what might hap-
pen, they turned the heat on at full pressure. Soon every
beetle was killed ; every egg was put beyond the power of
hatching. The record of these studies had to be closed.
Dr. Tower had to make a new start with his investigations,
and then .it was that he printed his book and reported results
up to the date of the overheating.

Still, even before the heat killed the beetles, another set
of experiments had been going on which were of vast im-
portance to biologists. Dr. Tower wished to know whether
or not it makes any difference to the next generation if beetle
parents are put into an unusual environment just before they
lay their eggs, and at no other time.

He suspected that germ cells might be influenced by their
environment while the body was getting them ready to be
laid. If this were so, he knew that one set of eggs would be
affected at a time.

98 THE NEXT GENERATION

He could tell by the looks of any beetle whether she was
about to lay her eggs or whether she had already done so.
Accordingly, in 1902, just before egg-laying time came, he
chose six pairs of beetles, put them into a very warm, damp
breeding place, and kept them there until they had laid 492
eggs. He called this set Lot A. He next put both the beetles
and the eggs in normal conditions again. Here the beetles
laid the rest of their eggs. There were 509 of them. They
were labeled Lot B. The larvae of both sets grew up together.
As it happened, many of the eggs in both Lot A and Lot B
did not hatch. Many larvae did not live. But we may im-
agine how carefully Dr. Tower watched those that did live
to become ancestors.1 And he had his reward.

He tells us that the parents of these particular beetles
were of the species Leptinotarsa multitaenita, and that they
had been brought from Mexico. Now it seems that when
beetles of this species are frightened, they " feign death," as
it is called, by falling to the ground with their legs folded
close, up against the body, and they lie there motionless until
they consider it safe to unfold and be alive again.

But there is still another species of these same beetles in
Mexico, called Leptinotarsa melanothorax. When these are
frightened, they feign death and fall to the ground with their
legs stiffened and stretched out in a straight line from the
body. What, then, was Dr. Tower's surprise to find that all
but ten of Lot A beetles, creatures that were direct descend-
ants of multitaenita, were feigning death in quite correct
melanothorax fashion. The damp-heat environment had so
affected them through their parents that now, when the mo-
ment of fright came, they did not fold their legs up against
their bodies as their ancestors had done, but stiffened them

1 Lot A produced 59 and Lot B 82 full-grown beetles.

NEW SPECIES 99

out and fell to the ground like bristling small porcupines.
Moreover, their children and their children's children showed
fright in the same way. Dr. Tower saw that his damp-heat en-
vironment had changed the leg habits of multitaenita beetles.
It had made melanothorax beetles out of them, and they con-
tinued to be melanothorax beetles for succeeding generations.
A wonder of this sort throws a flood of light on the laws of
inheritance and on one of the methods of evolution.

MUTATIONS COMPARED

Leptinotarsa multitaenita (2) and two of its offspring that were mutations — rubi-

cunda (i) and melanothorax (3). In their coloring 2 shows black stripes and marks

on a yellow background ; i has similar stripes and head markings on a red background ;

3 is red with black stripes and a black neck. (After W. L. Tower)

The most notable part of Dr. Tower's work was the proof
that, by giving beetles an unusual environment during the
time that the eggs were maturing, before they are laid, germ
cells may be influenced and a new species secured.

Now it matters little whether beetles feign death in one way
or in another. But suppose there were some sort of environ-
ment which could change cells in such away that the individuals
of the next generation would be hopelessly damaged after birth.
This subject will be studied later. Just now we turn our atten-
tion to the very beginnings of life for the next generation.

CHAPTER XV

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEXT GENERATION

Professor Loeb in the United States and Professor Batail-
lon in France have accomplished a marvel with frogs' eggs.

One thousand of these eggs were
taken from the body of the mother
before they were fertilized. They
were put into a small dish and were
pricked one after the other with the
finest possible platinum needle.
Water of the right warmth was
poured over them to keep them
moist, and the dish with its water
and eggs was set aside while Pro-
fessor Bataillon waited for results.1

Within four hours these hoped-
for results began to appear. The
eggs were evidently developing,
and before long most of them were
changed somewhat. Still only one
fifth kept on developing as normal
eggs of the normal frog are ac-
customed to do.

Moreover, as days passed, so
many of them stopped growing that
only 1 20 turned themselves into
tadpoles. This is the first great

TADPOLE No. i

This tadpole developed from an
unfertilized frog's egg that had
been pricked with a platinum
needle by Professor Loeb. It
lived five months and passed
almost beyond the tadpole stage.
When it died it had all four legs
and only the remnant of a tail.
(Courtesy of Professor Loeb)

1 Reported in Arature (London), June 22, 1911.

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEXT GENERATION IOI

transformation of frog life. Of this 120, three lived long
enough to become real frogs, while one hundred and seven-
teen died by accident or because
they could not get the right sort
of food after their legs appeared.

The oldest of the three lived
three months. He had all four legs,
and everything was complete about
him except that his tadpole tail did
not fully disappear. Then he too
died. But the surprise was that
any lived at all.

A record of this kind startles
every biologist, because nothing of
the sort is found anywhere in the
ordinary history of vertebrates.
What we learn from biological
history is that every descendant of
every vertebrate begins its indi-
vidual existence by the union of
two germ cells, each of which is
derived from a separate individual
of different sex. We learn that
unless this union takes place there
can by no possibility be a second
generation.

Aside from vertebrates, however,
there are other living creatures to
whom this law of two starting cells
does not apply. The amoeba, for example, shows quite another
method. Here we have a one-celled creature that multi-
plies by pulling itself in two. i'o-day each amoeba that lives

TADPOLE No. 2

This also grew from an unferti-
lized egg that had been pricked
with a platinum needle. It died
after six months with rudimen-
tary legs only. (Courtesy of
Professor Loeb)

METAMORPHOSIS OF A FROG

i, tadpole just hatched; 2, 3, successively older tadpoles seen from one side; 4, a
slightly older tadpole seen from the dorsal side ; 5, a still older specimen from be-
low ; 6, tadpole with the gills covered, leaving only a small opening on the left side ;
7, indications of hind legs ; 8 and 10, successively older stages ; 9, specimen with the
ventral body wall removed, showing the coiled intestine and gills ; n, both pairs of
legs free; 12, 13, 14, successive stages in the resorption of the tail; 15, adult frog.
(After Leuckart and Nitsche.) (From " Synoptic Text Book of Zoology," by Weyss)

102

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEXT GENERATION 103

and eats and moves about and divides is merely half of
another amoeba precisely like itself.1

But with fish and fowl and with all other vertebrates, in-
cluding man, a new order steps in. Instead of having but
one cell of protoplasm apiece, like the amoeba, all complex
animals are great bundles of millions of cells, and a separate
set takes charge
of each separate
function of the
body.

Through our
brain cells we
do our thinking
and our decid-
ing ; nerve cells
do the tele-
graphing for
us ; muscle cells
do the pulling;
cells of liver,
spleen, bone,
and kidney de-
vote themselves
to work each in THE AMCEBA AS IT MULTIPLIES

its own special

field ; while germ cells (also called gametes) are set apart for
absolutely no other purpose than to carry on the life of the
race. In fact they are the only bits of protoplasm in the
universe that are able to pass life along from one generation
to the next. They join the generations together.

1 For description of amoeba see " Control of Body and Mind,"
of the Gulick Hygiene Series, chap. vi.

104 THE NEXT GENERATION

In a certain town in Ohio, on a certain day, there were
born a colt, a lamb, a puppy, and a human baby. Each one of
these young animals looked and acted as all its ancestors had
looked and acted when they were of the same age. We are
so accustomed to marvels of this sort that we accept them as
a matter of course.

Perhaps we forget that germ cells of various kinds look so
much alike that no one but the keenest scientist with his
strongest magnifying glass could have told beforehand which
pairs of those cells were to develop into colt, lamb, puppy,
and baby. Nevertheless, lodged within the cells themselves,
before they began to develop, were all the different characters
that were to belong to each one of the four small creatures.
And these different characters represented different ancestors
all the way back to the beginning of things. Size and shape,
color and character, texture of wool and of hair, brain power
and muscle power, keenness of vision and of scent, structure
of body and type of disposition — each quality of each animal
was stored up for use and packed into the small compass of
its own particular pair of germ cells.

All this, then, is what germ cells do as their share of the
work of life. They help on the cause of the next generation.

Other cells multiply within the body and serve the body
itself without reference to the next generation. Not so with
germ cells ; it is true that they live within the body, but it
is equally true that they exist there without any reference
whatever to the welfare of the body to which they belong.
In no wise do they exert themselves for the maintenance
of its activities. On the contrary, they are set apart ; they
remain in organs of their own. The sole purpose of their
existence is to help construct a new member of the next
generation.

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEXT GENERATION 105

In scientific books germ cells, in quantity, are often re-
ferred to as germ plasm, and those who study the subject
often speak of germ plasm as a stream of life. They say that
" the individual is only the result of the unfolding of the
potential powers of a bit of germ plasm," and that, "once
developed, the person carries the rest of the precious mate-
rial around with him to hand down to his own offspring." l
According to this theory the present generation is the direct
outcome of all the generations that have gone before. The
claim, therefore, is that germ plasm is the only part of our
bodies which will live as long as the race itself continues to
multiply on the earth.2

In studying cells and their development it is important to
remember that neither amoeba nor germ cell can live after
it becomes dry, and that every dry amoeba ever found was
a dead amoeba. So it is with germ cells \ the mere fact of
dryness kills them. No germ cell can live and pass on the
life of the race if it stays in dry surroundings. This is true
of every kind of animal life, and it is interesting to see how
nature manages to keep these cells moist and useful even
when they belong to different kinds of creatures.

It is easy to keep fish cells from drying up, because the
fish themselves live in water and lay their eggs there. But
even fish have trouble in getting the next generation safely

1 As Weismann puts it, " In each development a portion bf the specific
germinal plasm which the parental ovum contains is not used up in the
formation of the offspring, but is reserved unchanged for the formation of
the germinal cells of the following generations."

2 In this discussion about evolution and about the laws of inheritance
there is often great disagreement of opinion among investigators. All
believe in evolution itself, but some put emphasis on one side of the sub-
ject, some on another side. Without exception, however, they are study-
ing facts, and the wisest among them are more anxious to arrive at the
truth than to establish their own individual point of view.

io6

THE NEXT GENERATION

launched into life. This trouble comes from the fact that
every generation of germ cells for every kind of animal has
to meet three conditions :

1. Two separate cells — one each from two separate
animals — must unite to form each member of the next
generation.

2. To live, they must be prevented from getting dry.

3. They must be so
placed that they will be
sure to find each other.
Fish meet these con-
ditions as follows :

The female fish, as it
swims about, first de-
posits a mass of germ
cells, each one of which
is an egg — an ovum.
Later the male fish, also
swimming that way, de-
posits on the eggs a clear-looking substance which seems to
resemble nothing so much as the white of an egg. This sub-
stance really contains millions of germ cells. Each one is
called a sperm, and each is capable of fertilizing one of
the eggs.1

It is a fairly easy matter to discover separate eggs in the
vast numbers>-which a fish lays at one time, for they float
about, looking like bits of jelly bunched together. It is
otherwise with the sperm cells. All that the eye sees is a
thickish liquid, but under the microscope, in the liquid it-
self, we see numberless darting objects that are in constant

1 2

FORMS OF SPERM CELLS (SPERMATOZOA)

i and 2, immature and mature spermatozoa of
snail; 3, of bird ; 4, of man ; 5, of salamander;
6, of Ascaris ; 7, of crayfish. (Enormously mag-
nified. Not drawn on scale.) (From Thomson)

1 A mature germ cell is often called a gamete. When two germ cells,
or gametes, unite they form a fertilized cell called a zygote.

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEXT GENERATION 107

motion. Each is a single cell — a sperm. Each seems to
have both head and tail, like a stretched-out tadpole. All are
so small that it takes six thousand sperm heads placed side
by side to measure one inch. When they have the chance
for it, each is ready to join an egg, and together they start
life for a new fish. This is called fertilization.

Now in a general way this history of fish beginnings is
really the history of the beginning of every vertebrate, man
included. There is never any confusion in results. The indi-
vidual started by fish parents becomes a fish, while birds and
beasts and each separate kind of human being have children
according to their kind. This law of life does not vary. It
is immutable.

It is of course true that the first two cells do not always
come upon one another by the same road. With fish they
are deposited side by side in water. This is all that is neces-
sary. They reach each other, and young fish begin to develop.

With birds and other animals there is another arrange-
ment. Since the environment of creatures that do not live
in water is always dry, and since germ cells must not be al-
lowed to get dry even if they do belong to dry land animals,
nature provides for this. The germ cells of these animals
pass directly from one individual to another.

A further point is that germ cells which are to carry on the
life of the race — whether of fish or of any other creature —
must stay in damp surroundings from the time they meet
until the individual is formed. Nature brings this about in
three different ways :

1. With fish and frogs the eggs stay in the water and
develop there.

2. With birds and reptiles a stout shell is supplied. This
shell grows about the germ cell within the body of the mother,

io8

THE NEXT GENERATION

and as it thickens, nature packs into the shell a mass of albu-
men — the white of the egg. This albumen does two things :

a. It supplies moisture for the developing cell.

b. It provides nourishment for the growing individual.
Moreover, the shell itself does two things :

a. It is of such a texture that it keeps the moisture of the
albumen from evaporating even after the egg has been laid.

b. It is so porous

».J. V.1

sh
sh m

alb

sh.ml

DIAGRAM OF BIRD'S EGG

that air gets into it for
the occupant to use
while it develops.1

With these facts in
mind, the natural ques-
tion is, Why are not
all animals — ourselves
among the rest — sup-
plied with eggshells
and then hatched out
when the time comes ?
The answer is that
when the growing ani-
mal is to be small, it is comparatively easy for nature to
arrange to have it spend its first stage of growing within an
eggshell, but when an animal is to be so large that it must
develop for months instead of weeks before it is ready for
the outside world, then nature has to make some other ar-
rangement ; that is, no egg can be planned for big enough

yk, yolk ; bl, germ disk ; alb, white, or albumen ; ch,

thickened albumen which holds yolk in position ;

a, air space ; sh. m, two shell membranes ; sh, shell.

(From Parker and Haswell)

1 After an egg has been fertilized and laid, it must be kept at a definite
temperature for a definite length of time. Hens and birds keep their eggs
warm enough by sitting on them. Incubators have to supply the same
temperature, else the eggs will not hatch. Each kind of egg has its own
time limit for hatching.

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEXT GENERATION 109

to hold all the nourishment that will be needed for months
of growth within a shell. For such cases nature has its
third device.

3. Instead of surrounding the germ cell with the white of
an egg for moisture and food, instead of supplying a shell
to keep the moisture in and to protect the whole from harm,
instead of sending the germ cell away from the body to develop
by outside heat, nature sees to it that the fertilized cell stays
within the body in a soft covering of its own. Here it is both
warm and moist. Here it develops until it is able to continue
its growth in the outside world. And while it develops, the
wonders of life and of growth reveal themselves.

Dr. Minot's facts about growth read like a fairy tale. A
few of these facts are given in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XVI

THE MARVEL OF GROWTH

Dr. Minot studied chicks from the time they began to
develop within the eggshell until the last bit of down was
laid in place, until the shell was packed to its utmost limit
with a living chick, until hatching time had come. To do
this he took eggs that were set for hatching, broke one on
each successive day, and examined the contents both with
the microscope and with the naked eye.

He also took frequent photographs of the progress of these
developing chicks. In this way he followed them step by step
as the bundles of the cells grew bigger, and we have the
printed record of what he found.

First day, " A mere gathering of cells."

Second day, " The chick has distinctly a head and a little
heart."

Third day, " The eye has developed, the heart has become
large, the tail is projecting, the dorsal curve of the future
neck is distinguishable."

Fourth day, "It is a strange-looking beast, with a wing
here and a leg there, a little tail at this point, an enormous
eye, almost monstrous in proportion, and, finally, a great
bulge caused by the middle division of the brain."

Fifth day, " We now have a chick the brain of which is
swelling, causing the head to be of so queer a shape, with
the eye that seems all out of proportion to the rest of the
body, that it imparts an uncanny look to the embryo. The

THE MARVEL OF GROWTH

ill

wing is showing itself somewhat, and the ends of the leg,
we can see, will by expansion -form the foot."

After ten full days of growing we have a chick with
feathers beginning to grow over the entire body. Within
those ten days the two germ cells which joined to form the
beginnings of the chick have multiplied themselves into this

ELEVEN STEPS IN THE EARLY GROWTH OF AN EMBRYO

From a photograph of a set of models, showing each cell enormously magnified.
The last three models are of cross sections and indicate how the layers are

being formed

astonishing result. Never again in later life does any chick
increase in size with such surprising speed as is shown by
the growing embryo of this oviparous l animal.

The special point to bear in mind is that, from start to
finish, this whole process of growing is nothing more nor
less than the dividing and the subdividing of the two germ
cells which were joined as one. This first combination cell

1 Animals developed from an egg are called oviparous.

112 THE NEXT GENERATION

became two ; the two became four ; the four, eight. Then
there were sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four — the total number
doubling about once every hour. And this is the way every
embryo begins to grow.

But, strange to say, although, when born, each different
kind of animal is to look so different from all others, this
difference does not show itself in the earliest stages of the
different embryos. On the contrary, among Vertebrates, dif-
ferent embryos in their earliest stages look so much alike
that often even an experienced biologist is hardly able to dis-
tinguish fish from salamander or rabbit from man.

For days and weeks, however, the multiplication of cells
goes on steadily, never ceasing, and even before birth the
time comes at last when each creature declares what it is by
its shape of body, legs, and head.

In the meantime the animal must have nourishment if it
is to grow, and nature supplies it. Animals in eggshells get
their first food from the yolk and then from the white of
egg that surrounds the yolk. But when the yolk supply is ex-
hausted, and when the white part is consumed by the cells as
they multiply, then it is that the expanding chick has to strike
for freedom and for a new environment. The time has come
when he must have more food and more room to grow in.
He finds neither the one nor the other within his eggshell.

Twenty-one days after the hen begins to sit on her eggs,
or an incubator begins to warm them, some instinct within the
chick tells it to peck at its shell and make its way out into the
world. The instinct is obeyed, and out steps a damp little
creature, as perfect as a chick can ever be. Those three
weeks have been long enough for multiplying cells to turn
themselves into head and feet and claws, down and muscle,
brain and nervous system, and every other minutest part of

THE MARVEL OF GROWTH 113

the marvelous structure that toddles about on its two feet and
begins to peck at bits of straw and kernels of grain.

Other animals also have their rate for rapid growing.
But before going farther, four or five statements must be made.

1 . Vertebrates are either oviparous, that is, developed from
an egg and hatched outside the body of the parent, or vivip-
arous, developed within the body of the parent and born alive.

2. All mammals, except the duckbills of Australia, are
viviparous.

3. Whether it is oviparous or viviparous, any developing
creature is called an embryo until it is hatched or born, as
the case may be.

4. Before birth oviparous animals receive their nourish-
ment from food which is stored within the eggshell, while
viviparous animals receive their prenatal nourishment from
the mother herself. It reaches them through a tubelike cord
which joins the embryo to its parent. At the outset this cord
is a mere thread, but it grows stronger and stouter as the cells
of the embryo multiply and as the developing creature grows
heavier and larger from day to day.

5. It takes twenty-one days for a chick to develop in its
shell. A duck develops in four weeks, a guinea pig in twenty-
one days, rabbits and squirrels in thirty days, while for cats
it is sixty-five days, for dogs sixty-two, for a lion three months,
for a pig four months, for sheep and goats five months, for
a bear six months, for a cow nine months, for a human baby
nine months, for a whale ten months, for a giraffe fourteen
months, and for an elephant twenty-one months.

Notice that in general the time needed for development
is in proportion to the size which the developing creature is
to attain in the end. Yet in every case the starting point is
always the same — no more than two germ cells for either

114

THE NEXT GENERATION

the whale or the elephant, and no less than two cells for either

the mouse or the mosquito.

In this connection remember that never in the life of any

animal do cells multiply so fast as before the creature is born.

And this applies equally well to viviparous and to oviparous

animals. But after
birth, what a differ-

f . {^,- ^ ence ! Compare, for

I jrifer-'-y ^ «t * example, the chick

&if' and the rabbit. The

former is spry from
the start. He has
keen, round eyes. He
spies food at once,
seizes it, feeds him-
self, and scurries
about on sturdy little
legs, apparently hav-
ing a mind of his
own from the first.
Fluffy down covers

FOUR TADPOLES OF THE EUROPEAN FROG
(RANA FUSCA)

The four animals are all of the same age (three days).

They were raised from the same batch of eggs but

have been kept at different temperatures. (After

Oskar Hertwig)

his body, and in sum-
mer, when chicks are
young, the warmth of
a sheltering mother
often seems alto-
gether superfluous.
It is otherwise with the viviparous small rabbit. He
arrives in the world blind, almost naked of hair, unable to
move in this direction or that, unable to hunt for food, able
indeed to do nothing more than take food from his mother
according as he needs it.

THE MARVEL OF GROWTH 115

These two creatures, the chick and the rabbit, are good
illustrations of the difference between some oviparous and
many viviparous animals. But, for both alike, surroundings
make all the difference in the world in their after life. If
they have too little food or unfit food, if their environment
is too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, they will not grow
as they should.

For example, Dr. Minot reports the effect of temperature
on the development of tadpoles. Four were taken from the
same set of eggs, and each was kept in water of a different
temperature. The illustration shows the result. The one
marked D was kept so warm and comfortable that the mul-
tiplying cells did their best. After three days he was a lusty
young fellow of goodly size and shape. A was kept so cold
that he barely lived. The result is evident. His cells were so
chilled that they could not multiply normally.

These and other experiments prove that, from the begin-
ning, the condition of the environment vitally affects the
development of the individual. When this environment is
right, the development is rapid and normal ; when it is wrong,
the development is sure to be abnormal.

Dr. Minot tells us that in the first year of its life a normal
seven-pound baby gains 200 per cent, and will weigh 2 1 pounds
by the end of the year. In the second year he will gain 20 per
cent, and after that about 10 per cent each year until he is
fourteen years old. Dr. Minot also pictures the growing baby
and shows that never afterwards does any human being learn
so much or grow so fast as during its first eventful year
after birth. Two things it can do from the start : it can take
nourishment, and it can thrash its arms and legs about aim-
lessly. Comparatively soon, also, it gains the powers of touch,
hearing, sight, taste, and smell. Through these five roads

Il6 THE NEXT GENERATION

information pours in upon the baby, and by the end of one
month he has learned that certain sensations are pleasant
and certain other sensations unpleasant. He fastens his eyes
on this or that and stares without winking. How babies stare !

After two months he has learned to expect definite things
at definite times. Three months, and the baby has learned
that he can so guide his muscles as to accomplish definite
movements. This is a very great discovery. He seizes his
own toes. He clutches other things and pulls them. At the
fourth month he finds he can really do things. He shows
purpose. " His movements are no longer purely accidental.
... At four months he discovers that the face and the back
of the head belong to the same object. He has acquired the
idea of objects existing in the world around him. He has no
instructor. He is finding out these things by his own unaided
efforts. Then, at five months, begins the age of handling,
when the baby feels of everything." The first five months,
as Dr. Minot says, " constitute the first period of the baby's
development. Its powers are formed and the foundations of
knowledge have been laid. The second period is a period of
amazing research, constant, uninterrupted, untiring, renewed
the instant the baby wakes up, and kept up until sleep over-
takes it. In the six-months baby we find already the notion
of cause and effect."

Dr. Minot's description grows more and more vivid. " By
eight months the baby is upon the full career of experiment
and observation. Everything with which he comes in con-
tact interests him. He looks at it, he seizes hold of it, tries
to pull it to pieces, studies its texture, its tensile strength,
and every other quality it possesses. Not satisfied with this,
he will turn and apply his tongue to it, putting it in his
mouth for the purpose of finding out if it has a taste. At

THE MARVEL OF GROWTH 117

the same time he is making further experiments with his
own body. He begins to tumble about, perhaps learns that
it is possible to get from one place to another by rolling
or creeping, and slowly he discovers the possibility of loco-
motion, which you know by the end of the year will have so
far perfected itself that usually at twelve months the baby
can walk."

Dr. Minot goes on to say that if conditions are favorable
during these early months, the later development of the child
will be greatly advanced. " In brief," he says, " I find myself
led to the hypothesis that the better health of the mothers
secures improved nourishment in the early stages of the off-
spring, and that the maternal vigor is at least one important
cause of the physical betterment of the children."

This chapter on growth and the preceding chapter on
germ cells make it plain that the welfare of the cell itself is
of utmost importance to the individual that develops from
the cell. Imagine, then, what the result might be if some-
thing in the blood could reach germ cells and damage them
before they begin to multiply in growing.

The next chapter gives facts instead of imaginings con-
cerning this very subject.

CHAPTER XVII
GERM CELLS DAMAGED BY ALCOHOL

On the fifth of December, 1911, there appeared an article
in a German paper, written by Dr. Forel.1 This article dis-
cusses germ cells and gives an interesting account of certain
hens' eggs and their hatching.

It seems that 160 eggs were in an incubator in a shed,
ready to be hatched. All were due to hatch the same day,
but when they appeared, instead of straight-legged, well-
shaped little creatures, every third chick that pecked its way
into the world had either crooked legs, useless wings, a
twisted back, or some other deformity. Moreover, instead
of 1 60 chicks, only 78 were hatched, and this included every
deformed one. The rest died in their shells, not having
vigor enough to make their way out. Worse yet, instead of
keeping alive after they were fairly hatched, 40 of the chicks
died within four days.

Such a record as this has to be explained somehow, and
those who studied the case searched surrounding conditions.
Dr. Forel reports results. He says the investigators found
that the shed where the incubator was kept had a cellar to
it, that the owner of the eggs used this cellar as a distillery,
and that while the chicks were developing in their shells the
man had kept his distillery busy making brandy.

1 Printed in the Munchener. medizinische Wochenschrift, December 5,
1911.

118

GERM CELLS DAMAGED BY ALCOHOL 119

By putting two and two together the men came to this
conclusion : " The distillery and its alcohol in the cellar killed
some of the chicks before they were hatched, killed others
after they were hatched, and deformed all the misshapen
ones that we see about us." Dr. Forel's conclusion was that
even the fumes of alcohol have power to damage germ cells
while they are turning into living creatures. No one ques-
tioned the statement for a moment. It is indeed quite in
line with what Dr. Fer6 discovered between the years 1894
and 1903.

He carried on two sets of tests with hens' eggs. All the
eggs were hatched in incubators. On one set he put vaporized
alcohol ; the other set was left alone. He repeated this ex-
periment many times, and the results were always the same.
Eggs that were not reached by alcoholic vapor hatched out
into the usual number of healthy chicks with minds ready for
active service. Eggs treated with the alcoholic vapor produced
many deformed chicks that had no minds whatever. They
ranked among chicks as idiots rank among men. They had
no mental power to guide their lives by.

Guinea pigs also add a proof or two in this direction.
Dr. Stockard was the investigator.1 He says that at first he
gave the guinea pigs alcohol with their food, but they disliked
it and ate less food. Next he put alcohol into the stomach
through a tube, but this distressed the animals, and he was
afraid it might do them harm.

Then came his final device. He made air-tight copper tanks
that were a yard long, a foot high, and eighteen inches wide.
The tanks had wire-screen floors, and under the floors he put
cotton soaked in alcohol. The alcohol evaporated up into the

1 See Archives of 'Internal Medicine, October, 1912, "Experimental Study of
Racial Degeneration in Mammals treated with Alcohol."

120

THE NEXT GENERATION

tank until " the atmosphere was saturated with the alcoholic
fumes." The place was then ready for the expected occupants.
After this, as he says, " the guinea pigs, three or four at a
time, are placed on the wire screen above the evaporating
alcohol, the tank is closed and the animals are allowed to
remain until they begin to show signs of intoxication, though

they are never com-
pletely intoxicated.
They usually inhale
the fumes about an
hour."

During all the rest
of the time, day and
night, the guinea pigs
breathed air entirely
unmixed with alcohol.
This was the treat-
ment they received
for six days in every
week, and it was
kept up for nineteen
months — with what
results, we wonder.

At first the fumes troubled them. It made their "eyes
water until tears ran over their faces." Dr. Stockard says :
" The majority of them sit quite motionless and sniff their
noses for a time and then become somewhat drowsy." A few,
however, "are excited by the treatment, and run about the
tank, and many often fight other animals savagely."

But in the course of several weeks they were not even un-
comfortable in the tanks. They seemed to take the fumes as
a matter of course, appeared healthy, and even gained flesh.

COPPER TANK USED IN DR. STOCKARD'S
ALCOHOL EXPERIMENTS

Notice the light-colored sponges under the wire

netting of the floor. Alcohol evaporated from the

sponges into the tank

GERM CELLS DAMAGED BY ALCOHOL 121

But what about the next generation during those nineteen
months ? Certain classified results answer this question.
There were four kinds of tests :

1 . The paternal test — when the father was alcoholic, the
mother normal.

2. The maternal test — when the mother was alcoholic,
the father normal.

3. The double test — when both parents were alcoholic.

4. The normal test — when neither parent had endured
alcoholic fumes.

The table shows what happened to the next generation in
each of these cases.

ALCOHOL TESTS

CONDITION OF THE

TOTAL NUM-

BORN BE-

DIED AT

DIED SOON

NUMBER

ANIMALS

BER BEFORE

FORE FULLY

BIRTH

AFTER BIRTH

THAT LIVED

BIRTH

FORMED

Paternal test . .

Maternal test . .

Double test . . .

Normal test . . .

Here we see, by the last column, that when neither of the guinea-pig
parents was subjected to the influence of alcohol, all seventeen children
lived ; and that when both parents were affected by alcohol (see the
double test), ten children were born before they were fully formed, six
died at birth and one after birth, while none lived.

These experiments leave no question as to the effect of
alcohol on the descendants of chickens and guinea pigs. But
our special interest is with human beings. In Philadelphia,
Dr. Gordon studied 1 1 8 families where both father and mother
used alcohol. In these families there were 200 children.
Of these children 150 were epileptics. He also studied 20

122 THE NEXT GENERATION

families where the grandfather as well as the parents used
alcohol. Here he found 26 imbecile children and 38 who
were lunatics, while every one of the others was defective
in one way or another.

In Bern, Switzerland, Dr. Demme looked up the history
of ten families that drank and ten families that did not drink.
Study the record and see what happened to the next genera-
tion of those that drank.

RECORD OF TEN DRINKING AND TEN ABSTAINING FAMILIES

NUMBER OK

DIED IN

IDIOTIC, EPILEPTIC, DEFORMED,

CHILDREN

INFANCY

SERIOUS NERVOUS TROUBLE

Drinking families

Abstaining families

5°

With facts piling up in this way, investigators have kept
asking themselves just when and how the alcohol of the
fathers most affects the children.

When Dr. Bezzola tried to answer this question he was
house physician in an institution for weak-minded children
in Switzerland. Here he noticed that almost always, when
weak-minded children were brought in to be cared for, some
one would say, "His father was a notorious drinker." To
see how much truth there was in this, Dr. Bezzola determined
to learn what the facts really were.1

He took the latest census report available (1880-1890) and
found that during those ten years 934,631 babies had been
born in Switzerland. He also found what the average number
of births was for each month of the year, and discovered

1 See publication by Dr. D. Bezzola, printed in German : " Statistische
Untersuchungen iiber die Rolle des Alkohols bei der Entstehung des
originaren Schwachsinns."

GERM CELLS DAMAGED BY ALCOHOL 123

that in some months the proportion of idiots born was much
larger than in other months. This was quite a clue.

Next he looked up the life history of 8196 feeble-minded
persons who lived in Swiss asylums, and made note of the
birthday of each one of them. He wished to know when the
children were born, so that he could count backwards forty
weeks * and find out just when the babies began to develop
from germ cells. He thought this might show him what the
condition of the parents was at the time.

He tells us that in Switzerland there are certain definite
seasons each year when what he calls " drink-festivities " are
most abundant — New Year's and carnival, the vintage and
the harvest seasons. Dr. Bezzola speaks of these as alcohol-
rich periods.

From July to September, however, wealthy people and poor
people alike are drinking less. They are busy with summer
travelers and summer occupations ; they keep regular hours
with fewer festivities. These are the alcohol-poor months.
, With his facts in mind Dr. Bezzola turned to the birthdays
again. His chart of results is given on the next page.

Follow the lines from left to right. Notice how they
move up during certain months and down during other
months. By understanding this chart we are able to under-
stand the substance of the report which Dr. Bezzola made.

1 . When alcohol festivities are most abundant in Switzer-
land, the largest proportion of weak-minded children receive
the gift of life. What is true of Switzerland is no doubt
equally true everywhere else in the world.

2. In large numbers of cases alcohol and weak-minded-
ness stand together as cause and effect.

1 Time needed for a baby to develop from two germ cells. See last
chapter.

Sept. Oct. Nov. Apr. May Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. June July Aug.

94.88

ALCOHOL AND FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS

1. The dark line through the center represents the daily average number of births
for the year as a whole.

2. The black points in the squares below the name of each month indicate the
daily average of births for that particular month.

3. The black points on the dotted line indicate the average number of normal
persons born during each month.

4. The black points on the solid black line indicate the average number of feeble-
minded persons born during each month.

5. Count backward nine months from each point to discover the month of con-
ception for both sets of persons.

6. Studied in connection with each other, the dotted and the solid lines show
that there are certain months of the year when the (daily) average of births is high,
both for normal and'for feeble-minded persons. In addition, the solid line shows
that the average for feeble-minded persons rises unusually high and falls unusually
low according as the months in which the individuals started to grow are alcohol-
rich 6r alcohol-poor. For example, notice that the average number of feeble-minded
persons born in January, February, and March is very high, and remember that the
alcohol-rich period of April, May, and June came nine months earlier. Also notice
that the average number of feeble-minded persons born in May and June is very low,
and remember that the alcohol-poor months of August and September came nine
months before. (From Dr. Bezzola's Chart)

124

GERM CELLS DAMAGED BY ALCOHOL 125

It is true that many drinkers have intelligent children, but,
as Dr. Bezzola says again, " These people were free from
too much alcohol at the time the new life was started."

No one can ever tell just how much alcohol a person may
take without damaging a future child, but Dr. Bezzola declares
that " the time may come when we shall see that every drop
of alcohol taken by the parent means a drop of stupidity for
the child."

From other studies which he made Dr. Bezzola came to the
conclusion that germ cells themselves may be damaged when
alcohol enters the blood stream, and that human beings who
develop from such damaged cells are doomed from the start.

Future investigations will show whether or not alcohol is
entirely to blame. In the meantime we are interested in such
studies because they show that alcohol which ancestors use,
seems to curse numberless descendants in body or mind, or
in both. The worst of it is that the curse is liable to be
passed on even though these descendants do not themselves
use alcohol.

Never blame any weak-minded person. Remember that he
cannot help himself, and remember that probably his parents
injured him through ignorance. Be thankful that your ances-
tors stamped you aright. Be thankful also that you have grown
up as a normal human being, and that you are able to under-
stand something about the marvel of growth which changes
vigorous germ cells into well-developed chicks and children.

After the earliest years of growing are over, the next
most important era of life lies between the ages of fourteen
and twenty. This period is the borderland between childhood
and maturity.

CHAPTER XVIII

FROM FOURTEEN TO TWENTY

In 1897, for the sake of gathering facts, Dr. Luther H.
Gulick wrote a letter in which he asked a large group of men

5 1

Ages 6

Number5 7 20 13 45 14 69 46 66 50 44 45 31 23 13 11
AGE OF RELIGIOUS INTEREST

certain definite questions. Among these questions were the,
following :

1. At what age were you first deeply affected by religious
influences ?

2. At what age did you become a Christian ?

126

FROM FOURTEEN TO TWENTY

127

3. At what age did you unite with the Church ?

A copy of his letter was sent to the general secretary of
each Young Men's Christian Association in the United States
and in Canada.

Five hundred and ninety answers came back. Dr. Gulick
studied these carefully, put all answers of the same kind to-

Ages

Number 9 4 9 12 37 32 52 46 59 47 60 48 47 34 15 11 4
AGE OF CONVERSION

gether, made out tables of classified figures, and printed
them for the benefit of other investigators. He was as sur-
prised as any one at what he found.

The tables showed that in the vast majority of cases the
one special choice which turned the lives of the men up-
ward instead of downward was made between the ages of
fourteen and twenty. Since such tables are even more inter-
esting to young people than to their elders, they are given
here in full.

128

THE NEXT GENERATION

Other tables illustrate the same point. Mr. Starbuck gath-
ered material and made out charts both for men and for women.
These show the same general facts which Dr. Gulick brought
out. They also show that in general girls made decisions at
an earlier age than boys did. This is because young girls are
usually more mature than boys of. the same age.

9 20 'f

)

23 ^^

Ages

Number? 5 8 12 37 32 51 54 66 49 57 44 43 45 17 11 12 13 3
AGE OF JOINING THE CHURCH

There are also tables of choices of another sort. Dr. Gulick
studied the report on crime and pauperism, given in the
Eleventh Census of the United States. From this report
he made another set of statistical tables.

These show that the average age of those who were in
prison at the time the reports were made out was twenty-
three years. Now this is so much older than the period of
conversion given in the previous tables, that we wonder if

FROM FOURTEEN TO TWENTY 129

decisions for evil are made later in life than those for good.
Dr. Gulick says the reports do not show when the men were
put in prison, but that the " average length of a man's sen-
tence to prison in America is 4.07 years," and that we may
assume that, on the average, half of the sentence of these
men had expired. This " would make the average on enter-
ing prison, of the maximum, group, twenty-one instead of
twenty-three years." Then he adds, " If now we could find
the age at which these individuals were committed to prison
for their first crime, it would be much younger yet, but this
is impossible and must be left to conjecture." He closes by
saying, " The tremendous fact remains that more individ-
uals take to criminal life at twenty or under than at any or
all other periods of life combined." His claim indeed is that
first decisions, both for good and for evil, fall within the
adolescent period. What is this period ? we ask. What are
the signs and symptoms of it ? Since knowledge leads to
self-control, the following facts are important.

In all forms of life the time is sure to come when a great
change transforms the outlook of things for each individual.
Up to this point the body has been growing continuously. It
has taken nourishment, has developed after the fashion of
its ancestors, has been influenced by its environment, and
has become vigorous or frail according as the conditions of
food and of health have favored or hindered its development.

Each step of this process goes on for a definite length of
time. But it is all mere preparation, for at the end of it
every creature that survives childhood enters on what proves
to be the most significant era in its history.

Until the dawn of this new era, mature germ cells are not
found in the growing body. Now, however, the special ma-
terial which has been there since birth, becomes active, and

130

THE NEXT GENERATION

§5

o ^

AGE OF IMPRISONMENT

Scale, 1000 to the inch. This table shows the total number of criminals for each
year who were between the ages of ten and forty-five years. Both prisoners and
inmates of reformatory institutions were included. The upright lines indicate the
ages. The figures at the bottom, between the lines, indicate the number of persons
of the given age; that is, there were 506 who were ten years old, 511 who were
eleven years old, etc.

the body, as it develops in new directions, accommodates its
growing to the demands which germ cells place upon it.

For human beings no period of life is more full of fateful
import than the years between fourteen and twenty. When

FROM FOURTEEN TO TWENTY 131

the era opens, the person is a simple child with childish
thoughts, childish interests and ambitions. When the era
ends, the person has become a man with his greatest de-
cisions of life already made, with the destiny of the rest
of his life practically settled. And this spiritual development
goes parallel with a development of the body.

Each organ, bone, and muscle now speeds its growing.
Arms and legs stretch out so far that sometimes they seem
altogether too long. For boys the shoulders broaden, the
back grows stronger, the jaw is firmer, the biceps and
other muscles grow bigger. In every physical direction of
height, weight, and strength, the body clearly indicates that
it is preparing for maturity.

All these changes are, in point of fact, the physical gate-
way to manhood. Nature is developing a man, the highest
product of evolution, one who will become the ancestor of
others like himself.

The transformation is just as real for a girl. Her form
grows rounder ; her voice becomes sweeter and richer. Every-
thing points to maturity. Her cells too are preparing them-
selves for a next generation.

In the meantime, for boys and girls alike, the emotional
nature keeps step with the physical. Every sense grows more
keen, more alert. New sensations are at hand, new ambi-
tions, new hopes, new fears. Some are so intense that the
youth hardly knows himself, while imagination seems to lead
the way with a flaming torch. Nothing is beyond its reach.

Boys now read tales of great adventure and count them-
selves the equal of the heroes. They study science with
enthusiasm. Machinery of every sort fascinates them — wire-
less telegraphy and the telephone, steam engines, and the
aeroplane. They wish to know where life comes from, what

132 THE NEXT GENERATION

it really is, and what relation the generations of the past bear
to those of the future. It is just now that passions become
strong. It is during these years that boys meet some of the
great temptations of life. If they can keep their craft steady
as it whirls through the adolescent years, they may be trusted
to guide it safely thereafter.

On every side great subjects appeal to the imagination
and spread themselves before the eager gaze of boys who
first really begin to grasp the splendor of life during their
years of rapid change. At the same time these boys grow
so fast that hands and feet seem to be in the way. They
are awkward in the presence of older people and of girls.
They begin to shave and to think more about their per-
sonal appearance. They wish to do such things as seem
most manly.

It is during this period that many boys, if they are igno-
rant of scientific facts about tobacco, begin to smoke. They
do this innocently, not knowing about the harm which may
follow. They take to smoking not because the odor or the
taste or the sight of tobacco pleases them, but simply be-
cause just now smoking seems to them a great and manly
deed. The mere fact that a boy begins to smoke in his teens
shows that he is passing through the period of life when he
wishes to be counted manly. Almost unconsciously he aims
for the admiration of his fellows. Sometimes he is even
lawless for the same reason.

Friends who watch the changing boy wait anxiously for the
outcome. Sometimes he himself is perplexed. He should be
told that, whether he wills it so or not, he himself is the
prophet of his own future. He must know that while imag-
ination and ambition have their hold on the rudder of his
craft, self-control and will power stand there, too. He must

FROM FOURTEEN TO TWENTY 133

not forget that, for good or for evil, character develops as
fast as cells multiply, and that, by his own choosing, he him-
self decides what the nature of his character development
shall be.

During this adolescent period girls find themselves more
self-conscious than formerly, more subject to the blues, more
given to reverie, more critical of themselves and others.
Often they are shy and awkward, while at the same time
some of them giggle at everything and at nothing. In fact
giggling is one of the symptoms of their shyness. They begin
to think more about their clothes, their looks, and their man-
ners, and about boys and what will please them. Some girls
become unexpectedly forward ; others find themselves sensi-
tive and tearful — so much so that their parents and friends
sigh and exclaim, " What in the world is the matter with
her ? She does n't seem at all like herself lately."

Let no one worry, least of all the girl herself. The period
of change will come to an end ; and after a while she will
lose whatever she may now have of unusual boldness or of
awkwardness, of shyness, of giggles, or of tears. For, despite
them all, even now she grows constantly more attractive in
appearance and more winsome in manner. She is becoming
more womanly and gracious day by day. She cares more for
the welfare of others, feels more sympathy for those who
suffer, grows ambitious to excel in all lines of endeavor, some-
times takes the highest rank in her classes, is in danger of
living under high nervous pressure, and must be protected
against herself by those to whom she is dearest.

It is during these same years that girls dream daydreams
and are tempted to overdo the reading of fiction. Much read-
ing of this kind is harmful, because it abnormally stimulates
the imagination and the emotions. Girls as well as boys meet

134 THE NEXT GENERATION

strong temptations during these years ; girls as well as boys
make or mar their future by the decisions made just now.

Indeed, no transformation of chrysalis into butterfly is
ever more wonderful than this change of human beings from
childhood to manhood and womanhood. It is therefore es-
sential that those who pass through the transformation should
have no false notions about it. For some the change comes
earlier, for some later ; for some one kind of temptation is
strongest, for others another kind of temptation. But, whether
one experience comes or another, whether life turns this way
or that, the adolescent era and all that goes with it is part of
the universal life of humanity, and it is during this era that
decisions count for most.

At the close of this chapter come two quoted conclusions :

1. "The period of special instability of the moral life is
the adolescent period."

2. " This is the period in which the moral surroundings of
the individual should be most carefully guarded. It is the
storm-and-stress period. It is the period during which life's
moral fiber is usually formed."

For these reasons, then, those who find themselves within
the zone of the adolescent years are wise when they attend
to everything that strengthens body, mind, and will power.1
Habits both good and bad, habits of health and of character,
or the reverse, formed now will, in all likelihood, hold until
death. Thus it is that the destiny of man's life does not de-
pend upon the Fates, as the ancients thought, but upon his
own choices during the adolescent years.

He may send his future prospects upward or downward
according to the decisions of his unhindered will. And, more

1 For facts about will power see " Control of Body and Mind," chaps, xxv
and xxvii.

FROM FOURTEEN TO TWENTY 135

serious than anything else, whether he wills it so or not, in
deciding his own fate, in forming his own habits, he often
decides the habits and settles the fate of his descendants for
generations yet to come.

The next chapter deals with one of these habits — a habit
which is able to affect the welfare of future generations, and
for this reason cannot be ignored by such a book as this.

CHAPTER XIX

NICOTINE AND ADOLESCENCE

At a certain banquet in Chicago last year most of the men
were smoking. But my friend did not smoke. Neither did
the man at his right. Instead, this man said in a low voice :
" The truth is, I have two growing boys, and I 've made a
bargain with them not to smoke if they would n't. I knew if
I smoked, they probably would, whether I wanted them to
or not ; that if they smoke, their sons probably will some
day, and I don't want to be responsible for damaging the
whole set of my descendants. That 's why we 've bargained
not to smoke."

As appeared afterwards, both the man and his sons knew
about Dr. McKeever's smoking experiments. It also ap-
peared that, in what he was studying out, Dr. McKeever
had enlisted the help of over one hundred boys, that their ages
ranged from twelve to twenty years, and that they all smoked.
Indeed, it was just because they smoked that Dr. McKeever
was making his tests.

He wished to see for himself what tobacco does for the
boys. If it helps them either in body or in mind, he intended
to pass the fact on^for the benefit of other boys.

In carrying on his- investigations, Dr. McKeever used
the sphygmograph. This machine has a clockwork contri-
vance which moves a strip of smoked paper, on which a
needle records the heartbeat. It is fastened to the wrist
directly over the artery which passes that way, and as the

136

NICOTINE AND ADOLESCENCE 137

artery throbs with the beating of the heart, the needle of the
sphygmograph traces its way across the smoked paper and
leaves its scientifically exact record there in black and white.

The boys were interested in the way the machine worked,
and in what it told about their heart action before and after
smoking.

The records were taken at different times during the year,
and each was slightly different from all the others, just as
the handwriting of one person always differs from that of
another. On the whole, however, the various reports of the

SPHYGMOGRAPH RECORD OF THE HEARTBEAT OF A YOUNG vyoMAN ON

THE VERGE OF NERVOUS PROSTRATION
The young woman does not smoke. (From Dr. McKeever)

sphygmograph explained two apparently contradictory facts,
both of which are perfectly well known :

1 . The smoker says he feels better, is able to think faster
and to work harder, just after smoking than before the
smoking began.

2. Athletic coaches say tobacco prevents success. They
therefore prohibit its use by their men.

It is as if one honest man said, " Smoking does me good,"
while another man, equally honest, says positively, " Smoking
does you harm."

To reconcile these differences, we turn to the diagrams
borrowed from Dr. McKeever's record. Notice that one of
these shows the heartbeat of a tired young woma/i. She did
not smoke, but she was on the verge of nervous prostration.
Compare this with the heartbeat record of the vigorous young

138

THE NEXT GENERATION

fellow of nineteen who did not smoke. It shows the kind of
work a healthy boy's healthy heart should do for him.

Compare both these records with the wave lines in the
third diagram — the one on the next page. See that first
flattened-out report ( i ), taken before the smoking began. It is

SPHYGMOGRAPH RECORDS OF THE NORMAL HEART

i, tracing for a vigorous fellow of nineteen : does not smoke. 2, healthy heartbeat;

a calm temperament ; does not smoke. 3, heart tracing for a healthy young woman ;

does not smoke. (From Dr. McKeever)

quite like the heartbeat of the worn-out young woman —
flabby, weak, lifeless. No wonder the fellow felt dull !

Study the next report from the same person. .See the beat
bound upward when the smoking begins — stronger, faster,
more vigorous. Fresh blood is being sent to every part of
the body. The brain feels it first, and every thinking cell
becomes more active. The smoker says he " feels good."
And no wonder. Not brain cells alone, but muscles and liver,
stomach and lungs and spleen, all these are getting better
blood faster and in larger quantity. Even the farthest-off,
smallest capillary is stretched out a little larger, and more
blood than usual hurries through it for a few minutes.1

1 For description of the circulation of the blood, see " The Body at
Work," of the Gulick Hygiene Series, chap. ix.

NICOTINE AND ADOLESCENCE

139

But this inspiring flush-time is soon over. Fifteen minutes
have passed. Even yet the sphygmograph has not been taken
from the wrist. It is still making records. And now see what
has happened. All the splendid vigor has faded out. Once

SPHYGMOGRAPH RECORDS OF THE HEARTBEAT OF Two
DIFFERENT PERSONS

1,2, 3, tracings made by the heart of a young man of nineteen : i, before smoking ;
2, while smoking ; 3, after smoking. He began to smoke cigarettes at fifteen. 4, 5, 6,
tracings made by the heart of a young man of twenty : 4, before smoking; 5, while
smoking ; 6, after smoking. Began smoking at thirteen ; now uses a strong pipe.
(From Dr. McKeever)

again that heart beats almost at dead level. Brain cells lose
their courage. Muscle and liver, stomach, lungs, and spleen
have to do the best they can with the slow-moving blood. It
brings short rations of food to cells that cry out for nourish-
ment. But, sad to say, the slow-pumping heart will stay in

140 THE NEXT GENERATION

charge of the slow-moving blood until the next cigarette is
smoked. Then it will jump into quick action again for a
few minutes.

And this is why a smoker must often use fifty and sixty
cigarettes a day to keep his heart up to the mark. This is
why a healthy heart gets turned into a tobacco heart. This is
why the steady smoker often fails where he wishes to succeed.
And the fundamental reason for all this is the double charac-
ter of tobacco ; it is a stimulant and it is also a poison. The
smoker craves the stimulation ; in addition he receives the
poison of nicotine.

To show the power of this poison, take the case of Dr.
Kellogg's frogs. He bought a cigarette, extracted the nico-
tine from it, and injected part of this harmless-looking,
colorless liquid into a full-grown frog. The small creature
died promptly. He took another good-sized, perfectly healthy
frog, injected the rest of the nicotine into it, and it too died
at once.

Dr. Kellogg goes on to say that " one fourteenth of a drop
of nicotine will kill a frog in ten seconds, while one sixth of
a drop will kill a cat in fourteen seconds."

Homer Leslie was eight months old. He was playing out
of doors, as Dr. Kellogg says, when he found a half-smoked
cigarette. He put it into his mouth, chewed it awhile, was
taken violently ill, and died within a few hours. The doctor
said it was the nicotine of the tobacco that killed him.

If tobacco leaves could be robbed of their nicotine, smoking
would be a fairly harmless habit. But the two are inseparable.
When a man sets fire to his cigarette, the tobacco turns itself
to smoke and ashes, and while this happens the nicotine
turns into vapor. If, now, the man draws the smoke into his
lungs, the vaporized nicotine goes with it. But after reaching

NICOTINE AND ADOLESCENCE 141

the lungs, they separate. The smoke stays on all the deli-
cate tissues of the lung cells, which is bad enough. But
volatilized nicotine is not hindered by any tissues. Instead, it
passes directly through the tissue of the lung cells, enters the
blood stream, and is whirled to the heart by the straightest
road possible.

At the moment it arrives, the sphygmograph shows what
the poisoned whip has done. It has lashed the heart to
vigorous action — not to last long, however, for soon the
same sphygmograph shows that the vigor has gone and that
the permanent condition grows worse rather than better.

The United States army gives proof of this. At an ex-
amination for the military school at West Point one quarter
of the young men had to be refused admittance because they
had what is called " tobacco heart " from cigarette smoking.

At another time a set of 412 boys wished to enter the
naval school at Annapolis. They were examined by an officer
in Peoria, Illinois, and all but 14 were turned away. As was
said by the examiner, " Of the 398 rejections, the greater
number were on account of weak hearts, and in the majority
of cases this was caused by cigarette smoking."

So the list of those who have harmed themselves through
ignorance might be lengthened.

With these facts in mind we understand why it is that, in
every school and college where the subject has been looked
into, people find that, on the average, smoking students rank
lower and are slightly older than those who do not smoke.

In 1897, at Yale University, when Dr. Seaver made his
thorough study of the matter, he found that out of every
100 students who ranked highest, 5 were smokers, 95 non-
smokers. Among the rest of the students at that time, 60 out
of every too smoked. He also found that, on the average,

142 THE NEXT GENERATION

those who did not smoke gained more in height and weight
and girth of chest than those who smoked.

Remember that these Yale students were still in the grow-
ing time of life. Recall the facts of the last chapter ; then
imagine what it means to have a young and growing heart
attacked over and over again, day in and day out, for weeks
and months and years, by a poison that does its worst work
with the heart itself.1

In 1910 Dr. Meylan studied the same subject with students
in Columbia University, and among his final conclusions he
made the two following statements :

1. "All scientists are agreed that the use of tobacco by
adolescents is injurious ; parents, teachers, and physicians
should strive earnestly to warn youths against its use."

2. "It has been shown conclusively by this study that the
use of tobacco by college students is closely associated with
idleness, lack of ambition, lack of application, and low
scholarship."

Various ignorant people are ready to protest against this
conclusion about the students. We must therefore let them
choose for themselves between two horns of the dilemma. I
give them. Either the smoker is naturally sWpid and we
should pity not blame him when he ranks low in his class,
or he is naturally bright but by his own hand has dulled
his brain with nicotine and made it impossible for that brain
to do its best work in the classroom. Perhaps the latter case
needs more pity than the former.

Thus far this chapter says nothing about grown men who
smoke, because all agree that it is the adolescent person who
suffers most. Let a man begin to smoke after he is twenty-five,
and as a rule he will do himself less harm than if he began in

1 For full particulars see " Town and City," chap, xviii.

NICOTINE AND ADOLESCENCE 143

his teens. Nevertheless, thousands upon thousands of middle-
aged men are bound hand and foot by the tobacco habit.

Fortunately, some of them are able to break the habit, as
did Senator Depew, president of the New York Central
Railroad. I give part of his story in his own words :

" I used to smoke some twenty cigars a day, and continued
it till I became worn out. I did not know what was the matter
with me, and physicians that I applied to did not mention
tobacco. I used to go to bed at two o'clock in the morning
and wake at five or six. I had no appetite and was a dys-
peptic. One day I bought a cigar and was puffing it with
the feeling of pleasure which is only possible to the devotee.
I smoked on only a few moments, and then took it out of my
mouth and looked at it. I said to it, ' My friend and bosom
companion, you have always been far dearer to me than gold.
To you I have been ever devoted, yet you are the cause of
all my ills. The time has come when we must part.' I gazed
sadly and longingly at the cigar, then threw it into the street.
I had been convinced that tobacco was ruining me. I have
never smoked from that day to this."

In all such care of ourselves we must not forget the bear-
ing of the tobacco habit on the next generation. It is true
that tobacco has not yet been shown to directly affect germ
cells, but it is perfectly clear that it harmfully affects the
smoker himself, especially if he begins to smoke before
maturity. And if a man smokes, his son is almost sure to do
so. In this case, therefore, the harm which passes from one
generation to the next travels by what is known as social in-
heritance, not by that which is biological. The damage of
such an inheritance is none the less real, however, for in
character and habits children are apt to become what their
parents have been.

144 THE NEXT GENERATION

It also seems clear that the tobacco habit is a broad stepping-
stone to the alcohol habit. The man who never smokes rarely
ever drinks, and we have seen the direct effect of alcohol on
the next generation.

Since this is true, it is well to understand how the alcohol
habit harms a man and when it is most apt to fasten itself
upon him, threatening future generations of his descendants.
We turn to this subject at once.

CHAPTER XX

ALCOHOL AS A BEVERAGE

' Students in the medical department of Johns Hopkins
University were very quiet as they listened to what the doctor
said. He told them that Charlie was dangerously ill, that he
was ten years old, and that his only chance for life was to
have his spleen taken out. He said the boy's father was
dead, that his mother had come from India with her son,
and that the operation would be sure to kill him unless, while
it was going on, blood could be put into his body from some
one else by transfusion, as it is called.

The doctor then asked for volunteers, and four of the
medical students stepped forward at once.

A sample of blood was drawn from each person. This
was tested, and the choice fell on a healthy young fellow of
twenty-four.

Next day came the operation. The surgeon opened an
artery in the student's arm, and a vein in the arm of the
small boy. He then put the two openings opposite each other
and joined them together. After that, whenever the heart
of the young man beat, it sent a strong current of rich blood
into the feeble body of the small boy. From being very pale,
the lad gradually grew pink. Even his ringer tips changed
color slightly.

The transfer of blood went on for about two hours ; and
during this time Charlie received between one and two quarts
of blood.

146 THE NEXT GENERATION

Before the operation began, the doctor said there was but
one chance in a thousand that the boy would live. After it was
over, he said it was those quarts of splendid blood that saved
the lad — that the new blood had given feeble cells a new
environment and made it possible for them to do what was
necessary to keep the body alive.

Now suppose both Charlie and the student had been
drinkers.1 What about the outlook then ? Sir Frederick
Treves says : " Having spent the greater part of my life in
operating, I can assure you that there are some patients that
I don't mind operating on and some that I do ; but the person
of all others that I dread to see entering the operating theater
is the drinker. He is a most dangerous feature in connection
with the surgical life."

The fact is that alcohol gets into the blood more easily
than does any food, that it is carried by the blood directly
to all the cells of the body, and that it seriously poisons
every cell it reaches. It does this whether the cell is part
of brain, nerve, or muscle.

Now cells reached by alcohol-bearing blood suffer in two
ways : ( I ) they are slower in getting nourishment from the
blood ; (2) they are slower in getting rid of their waste. This
is why the surgeon dreads an alcoholic person. As a rule, his
wounds are slower in healing and his heart is not so reliable
during the operation.

Every cell is affected, but no cells suffer more promptly
than those in the brain.

Last summer, on a steamboat between Seattle and Van-
couver, I myself saw what happens when alcohol is in the
environment of brain cells.

1 The student had never used either alcohol or tobacco ; neither had his
ancestors for three generations.

ALCOHOL AS A BEVERAGE 147

The fellow was young. He talked loud and fast, with a
thick voice. He said he knew he was getting drunk and that
he did n't care. He still had the power of choice, and he
called for more drink. He asked everybody to drink with
him ; he said he had plenty of money and that when he
reached Vancouver he could get more.

Those of us who saw him and heard him knew that, even
while he talked, tainted blood was washing its way over his
most sensitive brain cells. We knew that already those cells
which gave best aid to his wit — those which controlled his
judgment — were dulled.

Later the fellow went off with his friends. Later still he
was staggering across the deck. His friends were with him,
one on each side to keep him steady. They looked shame-
faced as they held him up. To the rest of us the sight of it
all was exceedingly sad — not because the fellow could n't talk
straight, not because he staggered, but because of what we
knew had happened to his brain cells.1 We knew that by the
power of his own hand, by the choice of his own brain, he had
thrown uncounted millions of these brain cells out of service.

Study the diagram (p. 148). It shows the order in which
brain cells always develop in the human embryo. First come
cells that control the heart, and last of all those that control
judgment and will power — the inhibitory centers of the brain,
we call them. By this chart of his Dr. Chappie shows that
alcohol damages brain cells in the reverse order of their
development — that cells which control judgment and will
power are cut out first, those that control the heart last.

Now we understand what the alcohol habit means, and
why certain anti-alcohol people were troubled when they found
a peculiar little bottle in the hands of school boys in Ohio.

1 See " Control of Body and Mind," chap. xxvi.

».-

4 • ,- '

CELLS FROM THE CORTEX, WITH FIBERS NOT GIVEN

A, cells from a healthy brain ; 5, cells from the brain of a victim of alcohol. Notice

the changed shapes, smaller size, and diminished number of the cells in B. Their

altered condition explains the inefficiency of an alcoholic brain. (After Horsley)

148

ALCOHOL AS A BEVERAGE

149

The bottle itself is three inches high and an inch and a
quarter across. It has a cork stopper, and the stopper has a
bone top to it. A glass tube goes through the stopper, down
into the contents of the bottle. A
rubber tube stretches up from 'the top
of the stopper. On the end of the
tube is a bone mouthpiece through
which the liquid in the bottle may
be sucked up.

The whole combination was packed
in a small box which it fitted exactly,
and on the box was a card which gave
the name and address of the saloon
from which it came.

This bottle had passed from hand
to hand and from mouth to mouth
until the teacher found it. At that
time it was half full of whisky. And
what was the object of the bottle
and its whisky ? The following bit
of history answers the question.

Several years ago the State Liquor
Dealers of Ohio were gathered in
Wirthwein Hall, Columbus, and one
of the speakers had for his subject
" How to Build up the Saloon Busi-
ness." Among other things he said :
" The success of our business is de-
pendent largely upon the creation of appetite for drink. Men
who drink liquor, like others, will die, and if there is no appe-
tite created, our counters will be empty, as will be our coffers.
Our children will go hungry, or we must change our business

DIAGRAMMATIC SCHEME
OF THE ORDER OF DE-
VELOPMENT OF BRAIN
CENTERS

i, heart centers ; 2, lung cen-
ters ; 3, locomotion centers ;
4, knowledge centers ; 5, in-
hibitory centers. (From
W. A. Chappie)

THE NEXT GENERATION

to that of some other more remunerative. The open field for
the creation of appetite is among the boys. After men are
grown and their habits formed, they rarely ever change in this
regard. It will be needful, therefore, that missionary work

be done among the boys, and I

\make the suggestion, gentlemen,
that nickels expended in treats
to the boys now will return in
dollars to your tills after the
appetite has been formed."

It was as if the man had
said : " My friends, unless we
can help ruin the boys by creat-
ing in them an appetite for alco-
hol, we ourselves must go out
of business. We must destroy

'• ^3 them for the sake of our indi-

vidual pocket-books."

The man supposed he was
talking to liquor dealers alone.
He did not know that an anti-
alcohol man was in the meeting,
and that he was taking down short-
hand notes of everything said.

From his own point of view the speaking delegate was quite
right. Unless boys can be secured, — unless they will con-
sent to damage their own brains, — the liquor business of the
world is doomed. Dr. Alexander Lambert shows this in a
table of figures which he made out. The inspiring motive of
his search was the number of people ruined by alcohol whom
he met in Bellevue Hospital, New York City. There were so
many of them that he decided to find out how old they were

A BOTTLE OF WHISKY CIRCU-
LATED TO "CREATE APPETITE"

AMONG THE BOYS
(From the Anti-Saloon League)

ALCOHOL AS A BEVERAGE 151

when they began to drink. He received full answers from
258 persons. The table itself tells the rest of .the story.

AGE WHEN 258 PERSONS BEGAN THE ALCOHOL HABIT

Before the age of 6 4 persons

Between the ages of 6 and 12 . . 13 persons

Between the ages of 1 2 and 1 6 . 60 persons

Between the ages of 16 and 21 . . 102 persons

Between the ages of 21 and 30 .. 71 persons

After the age of 30 8 persons

By this table we see that 69 per cent of those who had the
alcohol habit, began to acquire it before they were twenty-one
years old, and that only 8 persons out of 258 began to use alco-
hol after they were thirty ; that is, after they were fully mature.

It is evident, then, that if a boy can keep free from the
habit during the wonderful years between fourteen and twenty,
he has a good chance of escaping altogether.

Those who sell alcohol are bright enough to know this.
They know that if they wish to continue their own particular
kind of business, they must make sure of the boys. Their
motto, therefore, seems to be " Gather in the boys and ruin
them." But certain boys are long-headed enough to decide
not to be gathered in. They say the environment of their
own brain cells and the welfare of their own descendants
mean too much to them to be sacrificed in this way.

Not individuals alone, but nations also, are coming to the
same conclusion. In 1914 Secretary Daniels of the United
States Navy issued the following order :

"The use or introduction for drinking purposes of alcoholic
liquors on board any naval vessel, or within any navy yard or
station, is strictly prohibited, and commanding officers will be
held directly responsible for the enforcement of this order."

152 THE NEXT GENERATION

The power which man has to recognize danger, to control
his habits, to decide his own destiny, and to guide the future
of the race, turns our thoughts to early evolution times again,
and shows how it has come to pass that man is now able to
choose either safety or damage for body and brain alike, and
how he succeeds in either strengthening or weakening his own
character through the highest power that evolution has given
him — his brain. The next chapter dwells on this point.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CROWN OF EVOLUTION

When monsters lived and ruled the earth, it was bulk of bone
muscle, not size of brain1 or keenness of wit, that counted.

The creatures had eyes and ears and all five senses, but
not one among the number carried a brain so efficient as the
smallest normal man-brain that guides the life of the smallest
man to-day.

Think, then, of the change that has come about. To-day it
is brain, not bone or muscle, that rules the world. The ele-
phant and the rhinoceros still live, but it is small man with
his active brain that masters them when he meets them.

To understand how this has come to pass, recall the five-
linked chain of evolution, discussed in Chapter IX. Go back
far enough in history and apply the chain to the evolution of
brain in vertebrate animals. Recall the fact that in every
family of every generation there has been endless variation.
Also ask this question : Other things being equal, which
animals have the better chance to survive, those with quick
wit or those with slow wit ; those with an efficient or those
with an inefficient brain ?

The question answers itself. As a rule, quicker wit means
better chance to find food and to keep it, to scent danger and
to escape it, to succeed in competition and to survive in the
struggle for existence.

1 For description of the human brain and the work it does see " Control
of Body and Mind."

153

154

SKELETON OF HORSE AND MAN PLACED FOR COMPARISON

Take special note of the contrast in brain capacity of the two. Also trace resemblances

in general structure : leg bones, ribs, and vertebrae that correspond ; brains, faces, and

feet that are different developments from a common plan. (From the American

Museum of Natural History)

155

156 THE NEXT GENERATION

More than this, in the case of man, while brain developed,
hand and fingers developed too, until at last the human ani-
mal, man, found himself the' owner of a brain able to plan
great things, and of hands able to carry out great plans.

Thus man stood at the beginning of his new era, and it
was at this point that a different kind of inheritance stepped
in and helped take charge of human affairs ; for after the
brain was well developed, each generation began to make
improvements of its own, and to inherit other improvements
which previous generations had made.

To understand the situation, forget the present for a
moment ; sweep away all thought of our modern civilization,
all memory of our towns and of our cities, of our homes, our
schools, our shops, our libraries, our banks, and our churches ;
forget our waving fields of corn and grain, our orchards,
our mines, our railroads, our steamers crossing the ocean, our
wireless stations and our aeroplanes.

Then go back in thought to our earliest ancestors. They
were men and women with bodies, brains, and hands like ours,
but nowhere in those prehistoric times do we find a sign of
the comforts and the inventions which surround us to-day.

Without fire, living in caves, with leaves and skins for
covering, eating raw food as they could get it, our remote
ancestors lived and died in the midst of discomforts which
would appal us, their descendants.

Even language was but getting its start. One by one, how-
ever, new sounds and new words were invented for this thing
and that, until, in course of time, men and women were talk-
ing. They could now counsel with each other. This was a
priceless advantage which could be passed on from one gen-
eration to the next. It was a giant stride upward ; not a
longer one, however, than was taken by the first fire-maker.

.THE CROWN OF EVOLUTION

157

He had seen lightning in the skies, perhaps had even
watched molten lava as it boiled and bubbled, perhaps had
struck sparks from flint stones as he knocked them together ;
but never yet on the earth had there been a blazing fire
lighted by human
hands, guided by
the human brain.

At last, however,
the discovery came.
Some person some-
where may have used
his brains and his
hands, may have
rubbed two sticks
together hard and
fast, as some primi-
tive peoples now do,
and may thus have
started the first fire
ever kindled by man.

No one knows the
date of that first
lighting nor the pre-
cise method em-

Courtesy of Mrs. I.. H. Gulick

MAKING FIRE IN THE PRIMITIVE WAY

This Guardian of the Camp Fire Girls has secured
a spark from rubbing sticks together. She is now
^ blowing that spark into a flame

ployed. All we know
is that such fire-
making was as truly
the result of mental action as was the invention of the steam
engine by James Watt in 1736. He who made the fire dis-
covery has blessed all generations from that day to this, for
each generation has inherited the advantage of the discovery,
and has passed the advantage on to the next generation.

158 THE NEXT GENERATION

So, too, when man found he could gather grains from cer-
tain grasses, plant them together in the same field, and raise
wheat and corn for human use. This was another milestone
in the journey toward civilization — another blessing to be
handed on to later generations.

One after the other also came the inventions.

Man left his cave and built himself a hut — the beginnings
of architecture. He made bow and arrow, tools and traps,
rafts and canoes. And each separate invention was the result
of brain activity. Memory, curiosity, imagination, reason,
will power, choice — all these he pressed into service.

Moreover, by using fingers and toes as numbers he began
to count, and all our present-day higher mathematics come
from that early start. The decimal system itself is but a
reminder of the ten toes and the ten fingers of those early
ancestors.

In some such way, through the ages, discovery and inven-
tion followed each other up the road toward our modern
civilization. Each generation inherited what had gone before;
each made new inventions, new discoveries ; each in turn
passed on to the next generation what it had received and
cared to keep.

We of to-day have our occupations and our recreations,
our comforts of life, our requirements and our luxuries, as a
rolled-up inheritance from past generations of men, and no
form of inheritance is more valuable to us.

We see, then, that in addition to the physical inheritance
which each of us has received, there is this other form of
influence, this accumulated knowledge, these gathered-up ex-
periences, which reach us as a social inheritance from our
ancestors, and which we, just as necessarily, pass on to the
next generation.

THE CROWN OF EVOLUTION

159

In both lines of inheritance the present generation picks
up the threads of life where the last generation stopped its
spinning. The next generation will begin where the present
generation leaves off ; and from these threads the warp and
woof of human his-
tory is being woven.

Nor is this all.
Side by side with in-
ventions and dis-
coveries walked the
spiritual part of man.
It lifted him above
the sordid life about
him. It set him on a
pinnacle high above
all other creatures.
It made him con-
scious of time and
space, of past and
future. It gave him
knowledge of right

THE HAPSBURG JAW, A FAMOUS EXAMPLE
OF PHYSICAL INHERITANCE

Charles the Second of Spain inherited it from an
Austrian princess in 1661. The present king of Spain
has it from the same source. In this illustration the
young king's face is so turned that the distinction is
not emphasized. (After Stoddard Goodhue, in the
Cosmopolitan Magazine for July, 1913)

and wrong, a feel-
ing of responsibility
for other men.

Before man arrived, no creature had ever studied the past
for the sake of understanding the future. Man does this.
He learns the laws of development by studying the past,
and he applies these laws in shaping the future. Because of
this he now walks the earth with conscious power. He
knows that by using knowledge, judgment, and will power
he may alter his own destiny almost at will. He also knows
that by his personal decisions in this generation he may

160 THE NEXT GENERATION

decide the fate of future generations. He has hopes, ambi-
tions, longings, and he loves his fellow men. When the need
comes, he even dies to save them. He throws his thought
into future years and believes in life beyond the grave.

Besides all else he has studied the laws of modern life so
well — has learned so much about health and the way to
secure it, about happiness and the way to attain it — that
he is now able to lengthen human life or to shorten it,
to bless the human race or to curse it, by what he knows
and by what he does in carrying out the commands of his
unhindered will.

There has been both advantage and disadvantage in this
turn of evolution which gave man his crown — his brain.

The advantage is that there is hardly any limit to what
man may now do for himself and for his descendants, pro-
vided he has a normal, healthy, well-trained brain, and
provided it decides to serve him according to its own best
judgment.

The disadvantage is that even when his brain is not
normal and healthy, even when it has been badly trained
and is ignorant, even when its desires are for such things
as will harm itself hopelessly, it can still make choices ; it
can still choose a road to its own destruction and force the
consequences on the children of the next generation.

We therefore meet this strange fact of evolution, that
through his highest gift, the brain, man is now able to do
himself and his descendants more harm than can be done to
themselves by any other creatures, however large or small
their brains may be.

In point of fact, from the beginnings of brain power until
now, man has made decisions both wise and unwise ; he has
been guided by choices both good and bad.

THE CROWN OF EVOLUTION 161

As a rule, however, best choices have prevailed. These
have drawn men ever closer together. From being scattered
savages, fighting each other for life, human beings have
gradually gathered in larger and more friendly groups, until
to-day we have cities where thousands, even millions, of
people live together and depend upon each other.1

Moreover, as groups grew larger during the ages the notion
of family life also grew ; and now, in all civilized countries,
the family is recognized as the fundamental unit of society.
To form it we have a man, his wife, and their children.

1 For description of the way in which country towns are turned into
crowded cities, see the first three chapters of " Town and City."

CHAPTER XXII

FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY

Thus far the pages of this book have made it plain that
throughout life there runs the great fact of sex, and that,
because of sex, life on the earth is able to go on from one
generation to another.

In human evolution, however, man has crowned all indi-
vidual relations with the family relation. He has made this
smallest group of human beings — parents and their children,
with their home life — the center of his civilization. With-
out the family we should have no government, no commerce,
no art of any sort.

More than this, the environment supplied by each family
in each home shapes and changes, for better or for worse,
all who live in that home.

And because the family is so important to the human race,
because it concerns each one of us so vitally, also because, to
a large extent, we individually determine what kind of homes
we shall have, therefore such a book as this must take the
laws of family health into serious account.

Let us not forget that any disease which travels from per-
son to person moves surest and swiftest among the members
of the family circle.

When scarlet fever or smallpox, tuberculosis, typhoid fever,
whooping cough, diphtheria, or measles breaks out in any
home, the members of the family itself are in more danger
than other people, because they live closest together.

162

FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY 163

And what are towns and cities but groups of families
crowded together, ever influencing each other for better or
for worse ? No wonder, then, that in every land the future

Great Grandparents

Everyman

OUR ANCESTORS

Notice how the ancestors of each one of us (that is, Everyman) double with each
generation that reaches back through parents, grandparents, great-grandparentsTefc.
It is from this unnumbered host of ancestors that we receive both our physical and
our social inheritance. An old Shinto maxim of Japan is " Let men know by your
deeds who your ancestors were "

of the nation depends on the health of the bodies and the
health of the minds of its families.

This is so true that, for nations and cities as well as for
the families themselves, the motto of modern life is," Protect
yourselves and the next generation by obeying the laws of
family health."

1 64 THE NEXT GENERATION

Man has indeed learned at last that, for the sake of this
generation and the next, he must know not simply the laws
of individual health and of inheritance, but also the laws of
family health.

We shall soon see that these three sets of laws travel
hand in hand, and that ignorance about any one of them is
dangerous to all concerned.

In former times the watchword of a nation was : " Be a
patriot Be ready to die for your country."

In modern times the command is : " Be a patriot. Live
right, and live for your descendants." Put in other words,
this means : Don't die needlessly. Keep yourself vigorous
and healthy, and so conduct your life that you will be a
wortliy ancestor of coming generations.

This modern patriotism is indeed the nobler kind, for if
it is held to and carried out by successive generations of men,
far-away descendants of those who live to-day are sure to be
a blessing to their country, whether they live for it or die for it.

Through a knowledge of cause and effect and through
the choice of his own mind and the power of his own will,
a man may prove that he is worthy of the crown which
evolution has placed upon him.

No test of manhood or of womanhood is greater than that
which has to do with the welfare of family life.

The following chapters give facts about health, and about
its relation to inheritance, concerning which no thoughtful
person can afford to be ignorant.

CHAPTER XXIII

PROTECT THE STREAM OF LIFE

In the Journal of the American Medical Association for
September 2, 1911, Dr. Schamberg describes what he calls
" An Epidemic of Chancres of the Lip from Kissing."

It appears that on the fourth of March, 191 1, a group of
young men and women ranging in ages from sixteen to twenty-
two gave a minstrel performance, had a banquet afterwards,
and closed the evening with what were called kissing games.

No one suspected any danger, for all were light-hearted
and thoughtless. A certain young man was especially attrac-
tive and evidently quite popular. His one blemish, so far as
appearances were concerned, seems to have been a sore on
the lip, which led one girl to say that she let him kiss her
" with reluctance and wiped her own lips afterwards with a
handkerchief." As it happened, however, it was a plague
spot of the worst kind. Any man or woman who knows about
different kinds of contagious disease would choose smallpox
or scarlet fever or both together rather than the disease rep-
resented by the small sore which showed itself on the lip of
the young man.

Any intelligent doctor would have told the fellow that the
sore itself was swarming with contagious microbes, that it
was not safe for him to mingle with healthy people, and
that it was a wrong of great cruelty for him to press that
sore, with its millions of microbes, against the lips of any
other human being.

165

1 66 THE NEXT GENERATION

The evening came to an end, but the laws of cause and
effect did not go out of service. On the twenty-fifth of
March one of the girls he had kissed found a sore on the
right side of the lower lip, and it became as large as a pea.
A second girl discovered her sore early in April. In fact, in
her case there were two sores, one on the upper, the other
on the lower lip — a double proof that microbes had entered
her body and were doing damage there. On the thirteenth
of April a sixteen-year-old girl noticed that she too had the
dreaded sore. Six cases followed each other through the
months of March and April, and each victim was one of
the number that had been kissed by the young man at the
entertainment.

Dr. Schamberg goes on to say that " this most unfortunate
epidemic should teach a lesson which cannot be too strongly
impressed on the public, that is, the danger of promiscuous
kissing."

Perhaps some one may answer: "But a little sore isn't
anything. I 'm not afraid of sores." No, an ordinary sore is
nothing, but this particular kind of sore is a signed declara-
tion that the body has been invaded by a foe more cruel than
death itself, that the foe has already increased its forces
beyond the power of human reckoning, that these forces
have entered the blood stream, that the entire body in all its
parts is threatened, and that even the children of the next
generation are in danger.

Whether the disease is passed on by kissing or by some
other contact of the body, the microbes always pass from one
person to another under stated conditions :

1 . The disease must reveal itself in a sore.

2. This sore must come in contact, either directly or in-
directly, with a surface of the skin through which there is an

PROTECT THE STREAM OF LIFE 167

opening. A crack, a scratch, a wound of one kind or another,
is all that is needed. Into this opening the microbes make
their way. They may go either from the sore itself or from
something that has touched the sore and become contaminated
by the microbes. Once in, these microbes travel about in the
blood stream and establish themselves in fresh tissues, where
they multiply fast.

3. A cracked, moist mucous membrane is an ideal place
of entrance for the microbes. Lips, therefore, are often very
vulnerable, for they are easily chapped and parched and
cracked.

When a cracked mucous membrane comes in contact with
one of the sores, it is like the offer of a new home to over-
crowded microbe residents. They accept the offer at once
and establish themselves in the new place with extraordinary
rapidity. Twelve hours after the first contact is made, even a
surgical operation will not avail to cut them out. They are
intrenched beyond recall. And yet — and here is the most
alarming factor in the case — no symptom of the disease, no
sign of sore, will show itself until several weeks after the
first contact was made.

Notice the date of the banquet, March fourth ; notice the
dates scattered along afterwards when sores made their
appearance. It is true that if the trouble is discovered at
once, if it is reported to the doctor without delay, and if
special treatment is persisted in for three or four years after-
wards, a person may hope to be entirely cured. It is also
possible that a remedy which has recently been discovered
may cure more rapidly. Nevertheless, the appalling fact re-
mains that the disease itself is one of the most terrible of
the contagious maladies which man is fighting, and unfortu-
nately it is seldom reported when it first appears.

1 68 THE NEXT GENERATION

It is well to know that the first sore always shows itself on
the identical spot where the cracked membrane and the dis-
eased surface met. No wonder it is called " the mark of the
devil," for it shows just where the microbes entered.

Once established, they multiply, and as they multiply they
manufacture a poison. This poison is poured into the blood
stream, and wherever the blood goes after that, there also
goes the poison of the plague.

" At the end of a few weeks," writes Dr. Forel, " eruptions
appear on the body and face, and then commences a series
of disasters the cause of which may be suspended over the
victim for his whole life like the sword of Damocles, even
when he believes himself cured, for the cure is often un-
certain. This disease may remain latent for months and
years, to reappear later in different organs. It causes ulcers
of the skin and mucous membranes ; it sometimes causes
decay of the bones ; it affects the walls of the blood vessels,
causing them to become hard and brittle ; it causes diseases
of the eye (especially of the iris and retina), tumors in the
brain, paralysis, etc. In fact, it spares none of the organs of
the body."

Speaking of this disease, which is called syphilis, Dr. Morrow
says : " It plays the r61e of sapper and miner among diseases ;
it undermines the constitution, weakens the organic defenses,
diminishes the capacity of resistance, and thus renders the
system an easy prey to other forces of disease."

Dr. Osier speaks of it as " the worm that dieth not and
the fire that is not quenched." Miss Lavinia Dock, who has
cared for patients in all their degrees of suffering, says that
" mucous patches may appear in all or in any part of the
mouth and gums, tongue, tonsils, and pharynx. They may
also appear at the corners of the lips or in the nasal lining."

PROTECT THE STREAM OF LIFE

169

Now it is because of these patches in the mouth, on the
tongue, and on the lips — each one a center of infection —
that people everywhere are not only anxious to avoid personal
contact with those who are thus diseased, but are also getting
rid of the public drinking cup which diseased persons may
have used, and in
its place we now
have the sanitary
drinking fountain.
Here nothing but
water touches the
lips. Whether a
person has scarlet
fever, tuberculosis,
smallpox, whoop-
ing cough, measles,
or mucous patches
on his lips, no one
can by any chance
pass on his disease
by means of a sani-
tary fountain. But
with the public
drinking cup, how

different ! When you have the opportunity some day, watch
one of these in a crowded city. I myself have done this.

First came a healthy, vigorous-looking carpenter. He
emptied the cup, seemed to enjoy it, wiped his mouth, and
went away. "Quite a healthy man," I said to myself as he
passed on. " Probably no danger from him."

Next followed two giggling girls. Each took a sip and hur-
ried off, still giggling. "Silly," I thought, "but not diseased."

MODERN SANITARY BUBBLE FOUNTAIN

THE NEXT GENERATION

A newsboy seized the cup as they dropped it, and was gone

with a rush to sell his papers. " Fine boy," was my comment.

Then came a sight that frightened me — a man with every

mark of disease upon him. His walk betrayed him ; his eyes

betrayed him ; and, worst of all, he had visible sores on his

lips. He too drank
from that cup, and
my frightened query
was, ' ' What microbes
have you left there,
unfortunate man ? "
Next stepped up
a woman and a little
girl. The child may
have been five years
old, and she was evi-
dently thirsty. I saw
that her lips were
slightly parched and
cracked. My heart
stood still with fear.
Were the cracked
lips of the sweet child
to touch the cup the

man had used ? I could not reach her in time to warn her.
Then came relief. I saw what the woman did. She rinsed
the cup carefully, filled it to overflowing, held it to the
child's mouth, and told her to suck the water up from the
middle of the cup, not to touch her lips to its edge.

This worked well. Some of the water was spilled, but they
both laughed and went their way. I saw that the lips of the
child had touched nothing but water. She was safe.

OLD-FASHIONED DRINKING FOUNTAIN

PROTECT THE STREAM OF LIFE 1 71

If all were as wise as this woman, even public drinking
cups might be used ; but many are ignorant, and as I watched
the cup I knew that day after day there was danger for the
city through that single cup alone. For over and over again,
whether a man betrayed his condition or not, there were sure to
be many who used the cup and left dangerous microbes on it.

Fortunately for the race, the particular microbes discussed
in this chapter do not live long when they are on surfaces
outside the body.

It is well to bear in mind and to act upon the following rules :

RULES OF PROTECTION

1. Never use knife, fork, spoon, cup, or any other article
after another person until it has been washed.

2. Never put into the mouth pins, pencils, money, whistles,
chewing gum, or any other article that may have been in the
mouth of another person.

3. Never let the diseased surface of any diseased person
touch the delicate membranes of any part of your body. Older
people sometimes kiss children on the lips. This should never
be done. Let old and young alike kiss each other on the
cheek, not on the lips, for the thick, unbroken skin of the
cheek is a protection against the invasion of microbes.

Since these laws of prevention are easy to follow, we wonder
why cities and citizens have been careless so long. The answer
is that most of us are both ignorant and thoughtless. Few
realize that, of all the diseases that come to man, this is the
only one which is able to travel the road of direct inheritance
from one generation to the next — the only microbe disease
which seems to affect germ cells themselves, and which stays
with the cells as they multiply and become a baby.

THE NEXT GENERATION

When this occurs, as Dr. Morrow says, " instead of the
rosy, healthy, well-formed child, there may survive a puny,
frail being, feeble in mind and body, an object of disgust and
horror, doomed, if not to early death, to bear through life the
stigmata of degeneration and disease."

The baby does not always look ill at birth, however. In-
deed, the signs of its inherited disease may not come until
weeks or months or years afterwards.

Many pages of many books are crowded with cases in which
this curse has appeared in the next generation, but they are
too sad to be recounted here. He who is armed against the
danger is able to save himself and his descendants. His fate
no less than their fate rests with himself.

The disease studied in this chapter arose long ago in con-
nection with the immoral lives of men and women, and it is
now largely so transmitted. Indeed, very few of those who
live the immoral life are free from one or the other of the
two diseases mentioned in this and in the next chapter.
Nevertheless, the fact of contamination does not necessarily
prove immorality, although the resulting suffering is not les-
sened. The only way to safety is along the lines of protection
already stated.

CHAPTER XXIV

PREVENTION OF BLINDNESS

The doctor knew that certain microbes had entered his
right eye, that they were multiplying there with astonishing
rapidity, and that but one thing in the world could save his
sight. He was on the night boat going from Boston to New
York and had none of the needed medicine with him. Neither
was there any of it on board, and the boat was too far from
port to put back to Boston for it.

The results were inevitable. When they reached New York
the next day all hope of saving the eye was gone. The other
eye had to do double duty for the man ever afterwards.

The doctor knew perfectly well that this was a definite effect
from a definite cause. He could point to the place and to the
hour of the day when he had cared for a newborn baby. He
knew he had used medicine on the baby's eyes, because they
were threatened by microbes that bring blindness. But he did
not know how other microbes of the same kind, in the same
room, could have entered his own eyes.

Usually it is the babies and ignorant people who suffer, not
the doctors.

Dr. Howard reports the case of a woman whose eyesight
he tried to save. She worked in a hotel, was vigorous and
healthy, with perfect eyesight, and she had a daughter five
years old. In this hotel the woman handled towels, linen,
sheets, and all such things as are used by others — soiled
articles on which disease microbes are often left.

'73

1/4 THE NEXT GENERATION

" One day," writes Dr. Howard, " I was called to see her,
stretched on a bed, with pus-swollen eyes, crying from lacer-
ating pains, feverish, and frightened. There was no pos-
sible help for her ; it was too late ; her eyes had already been
destroyed. Two days before I had been called in to see her,
she had felt a little inflammation and, not having the slightest
idea what the trouble was, kept wiping the pus away with a
handkerchief. Of course the child slept with its mother. It
is a simple matter of unknown detail just how the pus was
transferred to the child's eyes, but it was, because on this
day the pus was penetrating the tissues, and the lenses could
not be saved. Mother and child blind for life ! And this
mother," as Dr. Howard exclaims, " had been sent out into
the world with a high-school diploma ! Educated ! Oh, it is
pitiable, pitiable ; it makes the physician's blood boil to write
or think of these thousands of cases that could have been
saved had our parents, teachers, ministers, done their duty."

The woman herself did not know that from sheets, towels,
etc. disease microbes might reach her hands, and that those
hands should have been washed before they so much as
touched her eyes.

Every blind asylum in every state and city bears testimony
to the power of this microbe. In 1890 there were over 50,000
persons in the United States who were totally blind, with
about as many more who were partially blind, and it is esti-
mated that over one quarter of the number were made blind
because these gonococcus microbes entered their eyes at birth
and so scarred the conjunctiva and the cornea that light could
not pass through to the retina. In every such case the result
is blindness.

Dr. Neisser says that in Germany 30,000 people are
blind through this disease alone. It is also shown that fully

PREVENTION OF BLINDNESS

175

BLIND WEAVER
Art Fabric Shop, Massachusetts Commission for the Blind

one quarter of those who are blind, in Europe as well as in
America, owe their blindness to the same cause, and that, had
they received treatment when they were born, their sight
would have been saved.

1 76

THE NEXT GENERATION

"Blind from birth," we say; yet in point of fact they
were not blind when they were born. They came into the
world with eyes as sound as yours or mine. Blindness came
shortly afterwards. It came because, at birth, the microbes
were present as a disease on the tissues of the mother. From
the mother they found their way into the eyes of the child.

WINDOW HANGING

Designed for the Massachusetts Building, Jamestown Exposition, 1907. Hand-woven
by blind women in the Art Fabric Shop of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind

Even then the eyes might have been saved if the right
germicide had been used.

At last, however, knowledge about this disease is spread-
ing so fast that different states are making laws for the
protection of the babies.

Connecticut, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio,
and other states have special state commissions for the

PREVENTION OF BLINDNESS 177

blind, and each of these commissions exists for the sake of
doing three things :

1 . To educate the public for the saving of sight.

2. To start and carry on enterprises that will give work to
those who cannot see : broom-making, basket-making, chair-
caning, weaving, typewriting, mattress-making and pillow-
making, upholstering, massage, etc.

3. To provide home teachers for those who become blind
after they are full-grown, and in this way to lighten their
affliction.

The state commission of Ohio also gives definite advice
for the benefit of every baby born.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE TREATMENT OF BABIES' EYES

" As soon as the baby is born, the midwife must carefully
clean the eyelids with water that has been boiled, using a
separate soft linen cloth or clean absorbent cotton for each
eye.1 She should wipe the lids from the nose outward, with-
out opening the lids. Then the eyelids should be separated,
and two drops of one per cent solution of silver nitrate dropped
in each eye. A dropper must be used which is employed for
no other purpose. Nothing that is not perfectly clean should
touch the baby's eyes. If the baby's eyes get red, if a drop
of matter appears between the eyelids or in the corner of the
eye, a physician should be called. Do not delay in procuring
treatment, as the eyes can only be saved by applying proper
remedies at once"

The germicide needed kills the microbes if they chance
to be in the eyes, while at the same time it does no harm
to the eye if the microbes are not there. Nevertheless, it

1 That one eye may not infect the other.

1 78 THE NEXT GENERATION

is such a powerful remedy that it should only be used on
a doctor's prescription.

Warnings from doctors and scientists are producing results ;
education is doing its work ; and more care is now taken of the
eyes of our babies than ever before since eyes began to suffer.

In the meantime, while knowledge is spreading, let us not
forget that microbes which bring this particular kind of blind-
ness do not injure eyesight alone. They -destroy eyes for the
simple reason that when they get into the tender tissues of
the eye, they find themselves in a place where they can mul-
tiply fast ; and as they multiply they work their way along,
scarring and destroying tissue as they go.

Fortunately these microbes make no impression whatever on
the thick outside skin of the body ; neither do they enter a
cracked place in the skin ; neither do they travel in the blood
stream here and there. Instead, their one power of doing
harm is after they have been lodged on any delicate, moist
membrane. There they destroy as fast as they multiply.

From the starting point they spread from membrane to
membrane of the organs of the body, and as they travel we
say : " The disease is making headway. The inflammation
is spreading." It does indeed make headway, for the advanc-
ing hosts scar all the tissues within reach, then move on to
other regions for fresh supply/ They move as a blight from
one tissue to any other which may be directly connected with
it, and wherever they go the doctor's remark is, "I find
serious inflammation." He speaks of inflammation of the
heart, inflammation of the kidneys, inflammation of the joints,
inflammation of this part and that, and over and over again
the cause is the same — gonococcus microbes have reached
the place and are scarring it.

Dr. Morehead speaks of the " snakiness " of the disease. He

PREVENTION OF BLINDNESS 179

says it often lies in wait for years, then unexpectedly brings
destruction to a man or perchance to his dearest friend.

One such case was supposed to be thoroughly healed ; not
a sign of the trouble had shown itself for six years. The man
supposed he was perfectly well, when, without warning, he
infected his own eyes with those microbes that bring blind-
ness. "At the same time all his joints became involved, as
well as the tendon sheaths of one foot. The microbes were
obtained from the discharges of the eye, proving the real
nature of the infection."

It is such cases as these that led Dr. Wilson, of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, to answer his students as he did.
They asked, " Can this disease be cured, and can a patient
be sure that he is cured ? " His answer was, " To the first
question, ' yes,' and to the second, certainly, ' no '."

This disease has the same source as syphilis — immoral
living. It is not the same disease, however, and, as we have
seen, it manifests itself in different ways. We understand,
then, the need of prevention through right living. We also
understand why city after city is forbidding the use of the
public roller towel, and we are not surprised that traveling
men who spend so much time in public places are learning
to carry their own towels with them. They were frightened
into this in one place by the true report that " at least three
traveling men had to give up their positions recently on
account of infection from this source."

RULES OF PREVENTION

1 . Never use a towel or handkerchief that others have used.

2. Never put your fingers to your eyes unless you have
just washed your hands; use a clean handkerchief or a bit
of clean cloth to wipe out the corners of your eyes.

i8o THE NEXT GENERATION

3. Never use a public bathtub until it has been washed
out thoroughly. Do not let the skin of your body touch the
seat in a public toilet ; cover it first with cloth or paper.

4. Never let the moist membrane of any diseased person
touch you. There may be death in the touch.

5 . Never sleep between sheets or on pillow slips that have
not been washed after being used by others.

6. When sleeping away from home, in steamboat, car, or
hotel, never let the blankets touch the body. These blankets
are not washed after each use, as are the sheets. Always
keep the fresh sheets against the face.

Already society tries to protect itself against smallpox and
leprosy, against whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, tuber-
culosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and other communicable
diseases. And the modern movement aims to save family
life from the two diseases mentioned in the last chapter and
in this one. Students of the present situation tell us that the
prevention of these two diseases is, in fact, the most important
hygienic duty which faces the present generation, and that
the safety of the nation rests on the ability of the young to
understand the danger and to save themselves and their
descendants through the power of right living and through
their knowledge of facts.

The rules just given have to do with the risk of passing
disease from person to person through the power of disease
microbes. In addition, there is another risk which intelligence
and will power must control — a risk which faces humanity
through the power of inheritance and through the curse of
feeble-mindedness.

In reading the next chapter, recall Dr. Bezzola's statistics
about alcohol, germ cells, and feeble-mindedness as given in
Chapter XVII.

CHAPTER XXV
SAFETY FROM FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS

For the sake of studying the matter of feeble-mindedness
at first hand, Dr. David Starr Jordan visited the Valley of
Aosta, Italy, four times — in 1881, 1883, 1900, and 1910.

After the first visit he wrote : " Cretins : were seen on the
streets everywhere and on the roads which lead to Aosta.
Everywhere were these feeble little people, with silly faces
and sickening smiles, incapable of taking care of themselves,
and all disfigured by the goiter at the neck. Not every person
with the goiter is an idiot, but every idiot has the goiter." . . .
"In fair weather the roads about the city are lined with these
awful human beings — human beings with less intelligence
than the goose, with less decency than the pig. The asylum
for cretins in Aosta is a veritable chamber of horrors." 2

In his book, Dr. Jordan emphasizes the following facts
about cretinism :

1 . It is found nowhere save in mountainous districts.

2. It is connected with disease of the thyroid gland, as
also is goiter. No person with healthy thyroid glands ever
has goiter or is ever a cretin.

3. It may be passed on from ancestor to descendant, ac-
cording to the laws of inheritance.

Now it was because certain inhabitants of Aosta appreciated
the point about inheritance that the tide turned at last and

1 See " The Heredity of Richard Roe," by David Starr Jordan.

2 A cretin is a special kind of idiot, found chiefly in the Alps and having
special bodily deformities.

181

1 82 THE NEXT GENERATION

cretins began to slip out of sight at Aosta. Dr. Jordan dis-
covered this fact in 1910. He had gone to the place expect-
ing to find conditions about as they were when he was there
before. But, "to my surprise," he says, " I was unable for
some time to find a single cretin or even anybody who knew
the meaning of the word.".

By asking questions, however, he soon learned that, about
twenty years before, Aosta had put all its old poor people
into asylums. It also appeared that gradually all the cretins
had been put there too — the men in one part of the estab-
lishment, the women in the other. The two groups were
kept absolutely separate — no mixing and mating ever being
allowed. As a result, in no case was there any second gen-
eration. Those cretins and goitrous persons had no descend-
ants to inherit their woe. They were the last of their kind.
So true was this that, as Dr. Jordan writes, "there is but one
cretin left — an old woman four feet high, who has the in-
telligence and, for that matter, the manners of a lap dog, very
affectionate but without any mental capacity." He goes on
to say that he visited the orphan asylum of Aosta and found
" every child bright and alert, without a touch of goiter or of
cretinism " ; that he " inspected beggars standing in rows at
the railway station, weak, inconsequential, useless, most of
them, but not a cretin among them." The truth of course re-
mains, that if healthy people live in conditions which bring
disease to the thyroid gland, they will suffer accordingly ; but
this is a different matter from beginning life as an idiot who
is a cretin.

But to come nearer home. Turn from cretins in Italy and
Switzerland to the feeble-minded in other lands. Dr. Hurty did
this one day in Indiana. He was visiting an institution which
admits only those who have feeble brains of one sort or another.

SAFETY FROM FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS 183

As he sat in the gallery with the superintendent, he
" watched the inmates solemnly walk through square dances."
Writing about it afterwards, he said : "A young man at the
piano attracted my attention on account of his firm touch
and excellent execution. ' He is an inmate,' said the superin-
tendent. ' He can play the music of the great composers quite
well and has composed several good waltzes. He is a graduate
of one of our minor colleges, yet he is an imbecile and suffers
from emotional insanity. A strong attendant sits by his side,
ever watchful to restrain him.' ' What is his heredity ? ' I
asked. ' That is the point, ' answered the superintendent. ' His
mother is feeble-minded, and his father died in the Central
Insane Hospital. He had a sister in the idiot asylum.' "
Then Dr. Hurty adds : " Defective people curse the day
they were born, and this man curses his parents. Almost
every man you find with an hereditary infirmity curses the
day of his birth."

In the United States alone we have 1 50,000 feeble-minded
persons. Some have intelligence enough to know they are
blighted, to know whence the blight comes, and to fling out
hatred and curses against their ancestors who doomed them.
These are called the feeble-minded. They have some intelli-
gence, some ability to think and to reason. But below them
in mental rank, unable either to think or to reason, unable so
much as to curse their fate and their ancestors, are the hopeless
ranks of imbeciles and idiots.

Feeble-mindedness, imbecility, and idiocy — these are the
descending grades, although, in speaking, people do not always
keep them apart. And between the grades there is every
shade of mental weakness.

In Vineland, New Jersey, 400 defective persons are
gathered in what is called " a great human laboratory."

1 84 THE NEXT GENERATION

Their ages run all the way from five to sixty years. Bodies
young and bodies old are there, bodies large and bodies
small, bodies strong and bodies weak. But among the
entire 400 not a single brain is either keen enough or
strong enough or mature enough to meet the requirements
of everyday life. Each is so far below the normal human
standard that it cannot be trusted to care for the body to
which it belongs — incurably weak-minded, every one of them.

These people are divided into groups, each group with its
caretaker. They are lodged in twenty-five different buildings.
A schoolhouse is here, a merry-go-round there ; barns in this
place, broad fields under cultivation yonder ; shops and a
zoological garden, groves, and playgrounds — everything is
provided for the comfort of these 400 mentally weak chil-
dren. Moreover, each is trained to do something for the
welfare of the institution itself. Some can do more, some less,
according to the different grades of feeble-mindedness. And
it is with these defective people that scientists are just now
doing some of their most notable work.

Years ago, as they looked into the dull and stupid faces of
feeble-minded people, they began to ask, " Has this dull
child any dull ancestors ? " And merely to ask the question
was enough. Over and over again the prompt answer came
back, " Yes indeed, this dull child has several dull ancestors."

This was the beginning of the modern movement. Since
that time family records have been made out in the shape of
charts. Facts about parents, grandparents, and great-grand-
parents have been put in proper order ; brothers, sisters,
uncles, cousins, and aunts have supplied other facts ; and
from the midst of these ancestors and descendants the old
story of cause and effect has been told again and again. In
each family, ancestors who were feeble-minded or alcoholic or

SAFETY FROM FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS

185

diseased through immorality have seemed to raise their heads
and say : " Here we are. We had tainted blood. We passed
our curse on."

Study these charts. They were made up from records kept
in the Vineland institution. Some of them carry the family
line back from son to father for five generations, while each

INHERITANCE OF FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS

Squares represent males ; circles, females. Black means feeble-minded ; white with
N in it means normal ; without N it means no data. When striated they indicate
some condition worthy of note. A added means alcoholic ; T means tuberculous.
The hand points to the individual whose ancestry is studied. In this case notice that
both parents were feeble-minded and that the man had three feeble-minded brothers
and one feeble-minded sister. Notice also that the grandfather on the father's side
was feeble-minded. (From " Heredity as a Factor in the Problem of the Feeble-
minded Child," by H. H. Goddard)

one shows what fathers and mothers and grandparents have
done for their descendants. Surely no disaster is greater than
that of being the descendant of feeble-minded ancestors.1

1 Dr. Ellis says : " Feeble-mindedness is an absolute dead weight on the
race ; it is an evil that is unmitigated. The unquestionable fact that in all
degrees it is highly inheritable renders it a deteriorating poison to the
race ; it depreciates the whole quality of a people." Also, " it is useless
to work for the coming of a better race if we impose upon it the task of
breaking the fetters its fathers have forged."

1 86

THE NEXT GENERATION

Dr. Goddard proves this in his history of the Kallikak
family.1 Here we find two distinct kinds of mental inheri-
tance. They run side by side from generation to generation
for one hundred fifty years. And, strange to say, the same
man stands at the head of both lines. He was a healthy young
soldier who fought in the American Revolution.

••

ALCOHOL AND FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS

Locate the alcoholic man. Notice that his wife was feeble-minded, that she was the

daughter of feeble-minded parents, that she had six feeble-minded sons and five

brothers and sisters who were feeble-minded. (From " Heredity as a Factor in the

Problem of the Feeble-minded Child," by H. H. Goddard)

Before the fighting began, he had one son. But, sad to
say, the boy's mother was feeble-minded. So also was* the
boy himself. He inherited the calamity from his mother.
Still he grew to manhood, was married, became the ancestor
of children and of children's children, until, up to the present
time, that feeble-minded son of the feeble-minded mother has

1 Out of kindness to the living members of the family, the true name is
not given. Kallikak is a name made up for the occasion. It is believed that
no other human beings are known by the same combination of letters.

SAFETY FROM FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS 187

had altogether 480 descendants. Of these, 47 grew up to be
normal, healthy people, while 143 have been or now are feeble-
minded. Facts are lacking about the rest of the descendants.

This is the established record of one line of the Kallikak
family. It brings out the fact that a feeble-minded mother
may stamp successive generations of human beings with the
misfortune of her own mental likeness.

The second line of inheritance in the same Kallikak family
shows an entirely different record. And here again the expla-
nation lies with the mother who, with the selfsame father,
stands at the head of her line.

It seems that after the war was over, the soldier married
a healthy, clear-headed woman of stock as fine as his own.
They had children and children's children, until the total
number of their descendants has now increased to 496.

Among these none have been feeble-minded. All have
been normal, vigorous, worth-while people, honored and
beloved and useful in all parts of the country.

In view of this double record it is easy to believe the
statement that feeble-mindedness stands in line with every-
thing else that is inherited. We are now told that if feeble-
minded people become parents, their . affliction may reach
their own descendants in remote generations. In an average
number of cases the inheritance will move along as follows :

1. If both parents are feeble-minded, all the children will
be feeble-minded. This law never fails to work itself out.

2. If both parents are normal, and if neither of them has
had any feeble-minded ancestors, all the children will be
normal, and not one of them will be able to pass feeble-
mindedness on to the next generation.

3. If one of the parents is feeble-minded and the other is
normal with no feeble-minded ancestor, their children will

1 88 THE NEXT GENERATION

not be feeble-minded, but they will be able to pass feeble-
mindedness on to their descendants.1

In Vineland these facts of inheritance guide the men and
women who are in charge. The result is that the feeble-minded
persons of the place are kept as separate as are the cretins
of Aosta. Elsewhere in the world they are not always sepa-
rated. Often they receive some training and then are sent
out into the world to shift for themselves.

It is at this point that danger threatens the next genera-
tion, for these half-trained, feeble-minded people are feeble-
minded still. As such they are able to pass their affliction
on to later generations. This must be prevented.

If the Vineland plan were carried out everywhere, and if
alcohol and germ diseases were not allowed to work havoc
with germ cells, feeble-minded people would soon be as un-
known in the United States and elsewhere as are the cretins
in Aosta.

This is the gospel of prevention which modern science
preaches.

As we know, however, we cannot altogether separate phys-
ical inheritance from the power of environment. The two
have joined hands, and they travel together. Together also
they help or harm both the body and the brain.

The next chapter gives a bit of history about the effect of
environment on the physical well-being of generations of
children.

1 In the Kallikak family the feeble-minded mother was responsible for
all those feeble-minded descendants ; but, since she was feeble-minded, and
therefore irresponsible, the weight of the responsibility rests with the father,
who chose her as the mother of his first-born son.

CHAPTER XXVI

OVERWORK FOR CHILDREN ONE HUNDRED
YEARS AGO AND NOW

In England one hundred years ago certain groups of
children were living under appalling conditions. Cotton mills
had been established, and the small fingers of little children
were large enough to move this rod here, that rod there ; to
tie broken threads ; to attend to the looms and the flying
shuttles. They could indeed do part of the work quite as
well as older people with stiffer ringers. So the children
were in the mills, not because they liked it, not because their
parents wished it, but because there was so little money in the
family that even the youngest member of it had to earn what
he could. Hunger and misery had joined hands. They had
forced the children into the factories and the mills.

The ages of these children ranged from five to fifteen years,
and even in the best of the places the youngest workers
were kept busy from six in the morning until seven at night.
They were supposed to do their studying (if they did any) in
the evening after working hours were over. No one gave
attention to the fact that minds cannot work when bodies
are overtired.

But this was not the worst. There were still pauper chil-
dren from the workhouse. Mill owners wished all the cheap
service they could get. At the same time the managers of
the poorhouse were only too glad to rid themselves of depend-
ent children, regardless of consequences. So it came about

189

190 THE NEXT GENERATION

that when mill owners needed more helpers, they went to
the poorhouse for them. And when the order came, the
caretakers of the place packed the children into wagons or
canal boats and sent them off to be inspected. Having
arrived, these children were put into cellars, — dark, damp,
unwholesome, — and there the mill men came with lighted
lanterns to examine them. Height, weight, size, and shape
were taken into account, " and the bargain was struck." It
was really a purchase of children by the wagon load from
their poorhouse guardians. Very little money was paid for
these loads of small workers, but at least, henceforth, the
poorhouse itself would not have to support them. As for
wages, they received none whatever. They worked " sixteen
hours at a stretch by day and by night. They slept by turns
and relays in beds that were never allowed to cool, one set
being sent to bed as soon as the others had gone to
their toil."

Robert Blincoe describes his own experiences. He says
he was sent to the place when he was seven years old, and
that children and pigs shared the same food, the pigs being
fed first, because they grunted so loud that they had to be
quieted. When fattening time came for the pigs, they received
" meat balls and dumplings " with their other food. The
children never had any fattening time. They were always
hungry, and they wanted dumplings, too. To get them they
" used to slip away and slyly steal as many as possible, has-
tening away with them to a hiding place where they were
eagerly devoured."

But it seems the pigs learned to keep " a sharp lookout,
and the moment they ascertained the approach of the half-
famished children, they set up so loud a chorus of snorts and
grunts that it was heard in the kitchen, when out rushed the

OVERWORK FOR CHILDREN 191

swineherd armed with a whip." Children were scattered,
pigs were protected, and the contest came to an end.

No wonder those children tried to run away. " To pre-
vent this, all who were suspected of such a tendency had
irons riveted on their ankles with long links reaching up to
the hips. In these chains they were compelled to work and
sleep, young women and girls as well as boys." l Although
this cruelty was carried on under cover, as it were, still facts
leaked out by degrees. People began to get excited and to
demand that something be done to save the children. One
by one, earnest men and women took the matter up. They
said children must not "be used up as the cheapest raw
material in the market."

In 1799 and 1800, as if to help the movement along, there
came a sweeping epidemic. It traveled from factory to fac-
tory in Manchester and throughout the regions about the
city. Everywhere it was the children who suffered most and
died in largest numbers. Doctors looked for causes and said
that " overwork, scant and poor food, wretched clothing,
bad ventilation, and overcrowding, especially among the
children," explained it all.

The result of the agitation was that even the British gov-
ernment bestirred itself. It passed a law that these children
should not work over twelve hours a day, and that they should
be clothed and sent to school and also have religious teaching.

After this, conditions were somewhat better ; nevertheless,
from then until now, in every country, certain groups of chil-
dren have been overworked, underfed, and wretchedly housed.
Take for example what is happening even in America, and
even in the twentieth century.

1 For full description see " The Bitter Cry of the Children," by
John Spargo.

THE NEXT GENERATION

In 1912 Mr. Claxton wrote : " I have seen children under
ten years of age working their lives away in the mills. Their
pale faces haunt me still. I saw little boys eight years old
drinking black coffee at midnight to keep awake until the
end of their shift at four or five o'clock the next morning.
Then they went out of the hot, steaming, noisy mill into the

BOYS OF FOURTEEN WORKING IN THE BREAKER OF A PENNSYLVANIA
COAL MINE

They work in this position for nine hours a day, at an average wage of $4.50 a week.

Their work is to pick out pieces of slate and stone from the coal as it moves through

a chute over which they sit. (From H. M. Todd)

cold air of the morning to their homes, probably for a little
fitful sleep and a joyless day, only to come back at night and
grind again through the long dark hours."

Mrs. Florence Kelley describes the work of small boys
" in the greatest canning factory in this country, just out of
Chicago." They sit for " fourteen hours a day on a shelf in
mid-air, every boy crooking his back and compressing his

OVERWORK FOR CHILDREN 193

lungs " because " the bright eyes of these boys must see any
defect in the lids of tomato cans and milk cans coming down
in a procession. ' ' She says ' ' they were constantly cutting them-
selves, crippling their hands, and cutting off the tops of their
fingers in this work, because they had to seize these sharp-
edged things and take them out of the procession of cans if
there was any defect in the lid. At the end of the fourteen
hours of crouching on this wretched shelf the boys were so
tired that they often could not drag themselves home, but
slept in the fields near by and went back to their work the
next day without ever having gone home, because they were
too weary at the end of the work."

Mr. Potter says that in another place he himself " has seen
children five, six, and seven years old working as laborers in
American canneries fourteen hours a day." His investigators
have also reported 45 children under twelve in one place, 50
in another ("including many small tots hardly able to walk"),
20 in another, working from eleven in the morning to half
past ten at night, etc.

And child labor is not confined to the canneries. There are
thousands of child workers who spend twelve and more hours
a day in crowded city tenements making artificial flowers and
willow plumes and tips to shoe strings. Others work in glass
factories, coal mines, silk mills, cotton mills, cigarette factories,
and similar places where each day's labor exhausts them.1

Just now, in the United States, there are about two million
of these workers under sixteen years of age. They work while
other children sleep and play. They do not know what it is
to feel well rested, well fed, and joyous. And what about the
children afterwards ? people are asking. Does overwork do
any real harm ?

1 Even now laws are being made which will prevent all this.

194

THE NEXT GENERATION

Miss Goldmark says that between 1830 and 1840 there
was such a change in the appearance of factory people who

had been overworking in
England for two generations
that eyewitnesses were horri-
fied.1 They saw " a race of
pale, stunted, and emaciated
creatures, irregular in their
lives and dissolute in their
habits " — a race " whose
only hope seems to be that
the race will die out in two
or three generations."

Dr. Ellis speaks of the
London weavers and draws
our attention to a medical
report which states that
" though not originally a
large race, it formerly con-
tained healthy and well-made
men." But, as the report
gives it, " the whole race of
them is rapidly descending
to the size of Lilliputians ;
you could not raise a grena-
dier company amongst them . ' '
To a country that wishes to
be ready for war at any time
this decrease in size is a
serious matter. And the same working and living conditions
are producing the same result in other European countries.

1 See " Fatigue and Efficiency," by Josephine Goldmark.

SEVEN-YEAR-OLD GULF-COAST
WORKER

She "shucks oysters" for twenty-five
cents a day

OVERWORK FOR CHILDREN 195

Miss Goldmark quotes from the report of a military ex-
amining physician in Germany on a certain factory district in
1891. "In the factory villages, where every one works from
youth up in the factories, almost all recruits were unfit for
service, and I believe that, if this goes on, it will be useless to
send recruiting commissions to these communities."

In the United States evil conditions have not existed long
enough in any one place to prove much. In all lands, how-
ever, nations are beginning to act on the general belief that
overworked and underfed children grow up to be inferior
men and women, and that inferior men and women make
inferior ancestors. The next chapter will show that steps
toward race improvement began to be taken over a hundred
years ago.

CHAPTER XXVII

THREE STEPS IN RACE IMPROVEMENT

CLEANLINESS

Try to understand why the children were overworked and
what their home surroundings were.

Machinery had been invented during the latter part of the
eighteenth century ; manufactures had increased ; factories
were built. It began to look as if great prosperity were at
hand. Men, women, and children who formerly lived in the
country came to town to get work in the factories. Here they
were crowded together in small houses on narrow streets. In
these places neither parents nor children knew what was
meant by clean streets, clean air, clean houses, clean water,
or clean food.

Naturally, therefore, the masses of the people lived in the
midst of what we should call unspeakable surroundings. One
such place was Bethnal Green, England. A report of con-
ditions there was printed in 1848, and on the basis of this
report Dr. Ellis tells us that " many of the houses were huts,
summerhouses, and sheds, never intended for use as houses";
that " there were thirty-three miles of streets and at least one
hundred miles of byways," but that "only a few miles were
sewered " ; that " dust bins were unknown, slops thrown
from the windows," and that " the streets were the common
reservoirs for refuse of all kinds, sometimes accumulated in
mountainous and evil-smelling heaps."

He also says that " the task of scavenging Bethnal Green,

196

THREE STEPS IN RACE IMPROVEMENT 197

with its hundred and thirty-three miles of dwellings, was
intrusted to thirteen decrepit old men," and that it took these
men about three months to go over the ground each time.

Since disease microbes had not been discovered in those
days, and since prevention was unknown, it is not strange that
the people in Bethnal Green were attacked by these disease
microbes and swept away by devastating epidemics. Ignorance
explained it all ; yet ignorance does not weaken the power of
the microbe nor interfere with the 'relation of cause and effect.

At last, knowledge about the need of cleanliness took the
place of ignorance. Cities' began to clean up. They paved
their streets, cleared the rubbish away, built sewers, tried to
get clean water, thought about getting clean air, and, in one
way and another, took what was really the first step 1 in the
modern movement toward race improvement.

Nowadays this step has become a giant stride. London,
New York, Chicago, Boston, and all other large cities are
doing more or less in pulling down old tenements and putting
up new ones that can be kept clean. They widen their streets
and keep them not only swept but washed. For the sake of
health and cleanliness some of them filter their drinking
water, others bring it from distant lakes in the mountains.
At the same time each city demands clean food as well as
clean air, clean citizens as well as clean houses. Cleanliness
has indeed become a modern health motto, although from
the looks of some of our cities it is hard to believe this.

PROTECTION BY LAW

But even from the start those who strove for race improve-
ment saw that cleanliness could not do everything. They saw

1 Dr. Ellis writes of these steps in his book " The Problem of Race-
Regeneration."

198 THE NEXT GENERATION

that factory managers and mill owners still overworked and
underpaid their fellow human beings, and they concluded
that nothing could loosen the grasp of greed and of cruelty
but laws stern enough to force mercy from the merciless.
This, then, was the second step in race improvement.

Promptly a new order began. One law after another was
passed, until now, in every civilized land, these laws grow
more important every year. They decide how many hours
each day one man may work for another, what protection he
must have against dangerous machinery, what shall be paid
in case of accident, how many holidays he must be granted,
etc. Other laws in different places control the age at which
children may begin to work by the day, the hours of their
work, the amount of their wages, the kind of occupations
they may or may not go into, their education while at work,
and so on.

RIGHT ENVIRONMENT FOR THE CHILDREN

Each state is passing such laws every year, but even while
the earliest ones were being enforced, those who watched
results saw that laws against overwork were not enough —
thfet for the sake of real race improvement children must be
supplied with right surroundings of every kind from the time
they are born until they are grown. .This was the third step.

It was precisely in this connection that the government of
the United States, in 1911, took a great step toward serving
the children better. It then established what is known as the
Children's Bureau. This bureau proposes to crush the forces
that are ready to crush the children. In order to do this it
intends to look up present conditions and report them to the
public, to educate the same public, and to enforce more laws.

THREE STEPS IN RACE IMPROVEMENT 199

And it is time all this was done. For years thoughtful people
have noticed that, as a rule, children are good or bad, that
they live or die, according to conditions about them — that
they are cursed or blessed by their environment.1

Dr. Ellis says that seventy years ago, out of every thousand
babies born in such cities as Manchester and Leeds, England,
six hundred died before they were five years old. Their en-
vironment helped them to die. Dr. Ashby says : "In healthy
children, among the well-to-do class, the mortality from measles
is practically nil ; in the tubercular and wasted children to be
found in workhouses, hospitals, and among the lower classes,
the mortality is enormous, no disease being attended with
more fatal results." Dr. Spargo gives a table of figures to
show what effect environment has on the death-rate of babies.

TABLE SHOWING INFANTILE MORTALITY FROM ELEVEN GIVEN
CAUSES, AND THE ESTIMATED INFLUENCE OF POVERTY THEREON

DISEASE

NUMBER OF DEATHS
UNDER FIVE YEARS

ESTIMATED NUMBER OF DEATHS
DUE TO BAD CONDITIONS

Measles

8,46";

7.IQC

Inanition

10,678

9,618

Convulsions

14,288

IO,OOO

Consumption ....
Pneumonia

4.454
77,206

2,648
1 4, 540

Bronchitis

1 0,900

"^SO

Croup

10,807

4, goo

Debility and atrophy
Cholera infantum . . . •
Diarrhea

12,130
25'563

7.Q62

9.397
11,502
1,782

Cholera morbus . . .

3,180

1.43'

141,723

78,463

1 Deep poverty is one of the worst of environments, because it is so
inclusive in the harm it does.

200 THE NEXT GENERATION

Make no effort to remember the figures in the two columns ;
they are merely an estimate. They do not claim to be exact,
but they do point a great truth. They draw attention to the
fact that when young children are surrounded by evil condi-
tions, — by deep poverty and by the kind of environment which
goes with such poverty, — they die of diseases from which they
should have recovered.

In 1892 almost 1000 babies and children under the age
of five died in Rochester, New York. At that time babies
and grown folks too used whatever milk was brought to them
by the dealers, for in those days no special attention was paid
either to the quality of the milk or to its cleanness.

In 1904, however, there was a different death rate for the
babies. Instead of 1000, only 500 died that year; and yet
since 1892 the population of the city had increased by
30,000 people. The explanation was at hand. It rested with
the milk supply. Somewhere between 1892 and 1904 the
Health Department of Rochester decided that the babies of
Rochester should have clean milk for their everyday diet.
Thereafter they had it, and everybody acknowledged that clean
milk did more than any other one thing to cut the death rate
in two. They said that no part of the environment is more
important for babies than nourishment.1

Students of living conditions are saying more and more
positively that, for. the good of the race, every kind of environ-
ment for the children must be properly looked after. They
are also saying that even environment will not do everything.
It is for this reason that they have taken their final step in
race improvement, to the study of which we now turn.

1 For full description of the clean-milk crusade in Rochester see " Town
and City," chap. xx.

CHAPTER XXVIII

In 1910 the state of Ohio had a population of about
4,700,000, and at the same time it was supporting at public
expense an army of 22,000 defective persons. Insane, feeble-
minded, epileptic, deaf and dumb and blind, criminal, imma-
ture, those ruined by alcohol — all these were counted in.

In 1908 the English Royal Commission estimated that
there were about 1 50,000 notably defective persons in Eng-
land and Wales. Now neither Great Britain nor Ohio is
counted as in worse condition than other places. They sim-
ply point the fact that to-day every civilized state and country
in the world is supporting handicapped people. More serious
yet, statistics prove that the number of these handicapped
persons is increasing by leaps and bounds each year. This
last fact proves two points :

1. We are kind to the present generation, and we show it
by taking good care of those who are defective among us.

2. We are outrageously unkind and carelessly cruel to the
next generation, because, in thousands upon thousands of
cases, we let the defects of one generation go on to the next
by means of inheritance.

In view of this condition many of those who love their
fellow men are now saying that every inheritable curse should
die with the man or the woman who has it. They say that,
in addition to the three steps given in the last chapter, a final

202 THE NEXT GENERATION

step must be taken. It is stated as a command. It is the
fourth great step in the race-improvement series. Protect the
children before they are born.

PROTECTION OF CHILDREN BEFORE BIRTH

This step leads humanity into a new road, and the road
itself leads to race regeneration.

Heretofore men and women have traveled the only road
they knew. They have lived and multiplied and passed on the
stream of life in ignorance of conditions affecting the welfare
of their descendants. By the laws of the struggle for exist-
ence and the survival of the fit, the most unfit died in child-
hood. The rest lived to become ancestors. As a result, until
lately each generation contained about the same proportion
of healthy and efficient people.

This course of events continued for many ages. But a
change came. Machines were invented. Men and women
trooped in from the country to the factories and the mills of
the cities. There they were overworked and underfed. For
generations children and their children's children did the
same kind of work, lived in the same deadly environment,
endured the same cruelties. And each generation had less
vigor than the generation that went before. Because their
ancestors had become inferior, whole villages suffered.

Among these people disease microbes now made havoc.
They killed thousands who should have been vigorous enough
to escape. And, worst of all, no one knew either the cause
of the death rate or the means of its prevention.

When matters were at this point, in 1865, while Pasteur
studied silkworms in France, he discovered microscopic
creatures that carried disease from worm to worm.1

1 For full description see " Town and City," chap. xxi.

THE FINAL STEP, OR RACE REGENERATION 203

Since his time other men have not only discovered other
disease microbes, but have shown us how to escape them,
and it is this set of microbe discoveries that has brought
us at last to the parting of the ways.

In studying records of the past we find that during recent
years there has been an enormous increase in the numbers
of feeble-minded, insane, epileptic, criminal, deaf and dumb
and blind, and those ruined by alcohol, by overwork, and by
unyielding chronic disease.

When we ask for an explanation of this, and when we
study statistics, we see that because we have kind hearts, and
because, in these days, we know how to save people from
disease microbes, we have for years, innocently enough,
been helping on the misfortunes of the race. In the struggle
for existence we who are the fit have spent time and strength
and money in keeping the unfit alive. We have lengthened
the lives of our degenerates and maintained them in comfort.1
This we should have done. At the same time, however, we
have allowed these same degenerate people to become ances-
tors of others like themselves. This we should not have done.
To-day our asylums, our prisons, and our hospitals are caring
for multitudes of defective descendants of those who should
have been as carefully guarded as were the cretins of Aosta.

It is this situation which compels us to study the old road
as we have just been doing, and helps us to understand why
we must travel the new road — a road dedicated not alone to
this generation but also to the next generation.

Common sense tells us that if we step across from the old
road to the new, — that is, if, from now on, we heed the

1 Dr. Morrow has said that during the past twenty years " the life of the
insane has been increased eight years, while that of the general population
has been increased but four and a half years." He says " this is doubtless
true of other defectives."

204 THE NEXT GENERATION

command of reason and protect children before they are
born, — we shall be able to change the entire outlook for the
race within two or three generations.

If we succeed in doing this, those who live in the future
will have the chance to be as surprised as Dr. Jordan was
when he went to Aosta. They will read about the defectives
of the twentieth century, will look hither and thither for their
descendants, and when they ask what has become of them,
answer will be made, " They have ceased to be ; practical
application of the laws of race regeneration saved them."

If now we ask what race regeneration really means, we shall
be told that children have the right to be well born, and that
men and woman who are so defective as to be unfit must not
be allowed to become ancestors. And this is the meaning of
race regeneration.

It is a matter of securing better descendants by taking the
laws of inheritance into account. It is an obligation which
commands each generation to pass on to future generations
the best it has received, and to let its worst inheritance die
with itself.

The history of the human race does indeed make it plain
that a worthy line of ancestors is more to be desired than
gold or lands or worldly position of any sort. It proves that
right parentage is the noblest gift which one generation
may offer to another.

Each of us carries his own ancestral standard through life.
Each received this standard from men and women who are
ranged back of us in endless rows. If the standard was high
when it came to us, let us pass it on just as high to those who
are to come after. If it tottered when we received it, let us
so conduct our lives that it may be straightened up a little and
be carried higher rather than lower by the next generation.

QUESTIONS

CHAPTER I

Give three reasons why a careful breeder is willing to pay high
for his animals. Describe what a scientist might do if he knew
certain definite facts about the ancestors of your neighbors. Mention
some of the labels which he might nail to the doors. When was
Jonathan Edwards born ? What were his noted characteristics ? In
1900 how many of his descendants had been located? Mention
the occupations of some of them. Taken as a whole, what influence
has the family of Jonathan Edwards had upon the world ? What
was the occupation of the first-recorded ancestor of the Jukes family ?
When and where was he born ? What was his character ? How
many descendants have been traced ? Mention some of their occu-
pations. Who were obliged to support those members of the family
who spent their time in prison and in the workhouse ? How much
has the Jukes family already cost the people of New York state ?
In what two ways are people cursed from birth ? What does the
chart show ? In the United States what was the increase in popu-
lation between 1800 and 1900? What difference will it make in
the outcome of things whether one kind of family or the other kind
multiplies faster on the earth ?

CHAPTER II

Mention two distinct kinds of pure-bred Andalusian fowls. When
a black and a white Andalusian fowl were chosen to be ancestors
of the next generation, what was the question about their descend-
ants ? What was the color of the chicks ? Did it make any difference
which parent was black, which white ? Were the children hybrid or
pure-bred ? When both parents are pure-bred of the same kind,
will their children be hybrid or pure-bred ? Explain the illustration

205

206 THE NEXT GENERATION

which shows color inheritance. Tell. which individuals in the illus-
tration are pure-bred, which hybrid. If we krfow the color of
Andalusian fowls, what can we always tell about their descendants ?

CHAPTER III

During the years from 1900 to 1905 what small animals were
receiving special study in the Zoological Laboratory of Harvard
University ? Why did Professor Castle keep them in this labora-
tory ? Why did he do his main work with guinea pigs ? In the case
of small animals why is it easy to trace resemblances between far-
away ancestors and present-day descendants ? How many genera-
tions do guinea pigs have each year ? Why does this give guinea
pigs an advantage as helpers in answering questions about inher-
itance ? Describe the guinea pig — its size, color, coat, etc. What
did Dr. Castle learn about the way these characters are handed
on from ancestor to descendant ? Are the laws of inheritance the
same with guinea pigs as with Andalusian fowls ? At first sight, do
they seem to be the same or different ? When black guinea pigs
were mated with albino white, what was the color of their children ?
How do we know that all the black guinea-pig children were hybrid
and not pure-bred ? Why were these hybrids black and not blue ?
Describe the illustration. What do we mean when we say that
black is dominant and white recessive ? Which color is dominant
with Andalusian fowls ? Besides color, what other characters move
along by definite laws ? With guinea pigs, which is dominant, rough
coat or smooth coat ? long hair or short hair ? By knowing the laws,
how can one secure the desired kinds of descendants ? Why are
human beings interested in the laws of life ? In what way is each
person a bundle of combined characters ? What did Dr. Forel dis-
cover about his own face ? How does he explain the children of
many a distinguished man?

CHAPTER IV

Who was Mendel ? What did he do in the gardens of the cloister
at Briinn ? How many different kinds of peas did he raise ? For
what was he searching ? Mention some of the characters which he

QUESTIONS 207

studied in pairs. What did he do about keeping the pollen of
different plants separate ? Why was he so careful ? Which char-
acters were dominant ? Which were recessive ? Was every character
either dominant or recessive ? For how many years did Mendel
carry on his investigations ? When did he write his important
papers ? What did these papers tell ? What effect did the reading
of his papers have on his audience ? What happened to the papers
afterwards ? How long did they stay in the Briinn library ? When
did Mendel die ? What was he heard to say many times before he
died ? What happened sixteen years after his death ? What do
modern scientists think about Mendel and his work ? Which books
take Mendel and his laws into account ? In what way has his name
stamped the whole subject of inheritance ? State three of Mendel's
laws as given. Compare these laws with those given in the two pre-
vious chapters. How did Mendel discover his laws ? Do they apply
best to animals or to plants ?

CHAPTER V

In 1900 what did the National Association of British and Irish
Millers decide to do ? Who was chosen chief investigator ? Mention
some of the qualities of the different kinds of wheat he used.
Describe Professor Biffen's work with these varieties. What success
did he have? Describe the two fields of corn that grew side by
side. What was it that made the difference in the yield of the two
fields ? What has Mr. Burbank done in corn raising ? What about
the value of his potatoes ? Mention other vegetables and fruit that
have been improved by using the laws of inheritance. W^hat is the
boll weevil ? How does it damage the cotton crop ? What has been
done to save the cotton from this weevil ? Describe the difference
between the amaryllis of former times and the new one produced
by Mr. Burbank. Describe his work with the poppy. How large
a poppy blossom has he secured ? What can he do with poppy-seed
capsules ? How did he change the daisy ? What has he done to the
thorn-covered cactus ? What have breeders done in changing sheep ?
For what is the Jersey cow famous ? Mention other kinds of cattle
and the special quality for which they are bred. What does all this
show about the modern evolution of plants and animals ?

208 THE NEXT GENERATION

CHAPTER VI

Where are horses found ? What can be said about their resem-
blance and relation to each other ? What is a fossil (see footnote) ?
In what special museum in New York City do we find large num-
bers of fossil bones ? How are the horse bones grouped in the
museum ? So far as size is concerned, how do they progress ?
Speak of the difference between the largest horse skeleton and the
smallest. If these were alive to-day, would they treat each other
as friends or as strangers ? What remarkable fact do the graded
horse bones prove ? How long did the small horse live before the
large one ? During that time, what changes took place in legs
and jaw and skull bones ? Describe the foot as it changed into
a hoof. What part of the middle toe finally became the hoof ?
What became of the other toes ? What sign of toe is there on
the legs of a modern horse ? Where are these splint bones ? While
the toe bones were changing, what happened to the jaw bones
and the teeth of the horse ? What explains the gap between the
front teeth and the back teeth of a modern horse ? When the
smallest and earliest horse bones first came to light, what name
was given to the little creature ? Where have many fossil horse
bones been found ? What connections have been traced ? How
many sets of scientists are needed to explain buried bones ? What
does the geologist do ? What does the paleontologist do ? What do
we learn from fossil bones ?

Which set of bones gives the most straight-ahead, complete his-
tory of the animal ? In what countries have fossil horse bones been
found ? Where does this best series come from ? If a horse could
think and talk, what might he say about his ancestors ?

CHAPTER VII

Where did Darwin keep his angleworms ? What did he know
about their different senses ? What questions did he ask himself
about them ? Why are angleworms studied at night ? Describe
their actions as Darwin saw them. When did Darwin's interest in
angleworms begin ? What does Darwin say about the matter ?

QUESTIONS 209

What are the two parts of the work of Darwin's life? How old
was he when he began his shell collection ? Describe his experience
in collecting beetles in Cambridge. How old was he when he went
to South America ? What was his position on the Beagle ? Describe
the Beagle (see footnote). How long was Darwin away from
England ? What fossil discoveries did he make in South America ?
What difference was there between the size of the fossil bones and
the size of the living creatures which Darwin found in South
America ? What is the general contrast in size between animals
now living in South America and those in Africa ? How do we know
that South American animals were once as large as those now alive
in Africa ? What does history tell us about the horse in America
when Columbus arrived ? How do we know that horses were
among the oldest inhabitants of America ? What is proved by fossil
remains found in Europe, Asia, and America ? What theory explains
the fact that animals of the same kind were living during the same
era in all three continents ; that is, how did they travel from con-
tinent to continent ? In his study of animals and fossils, for what
was Darwin constantly searching ? Why did he gather facts so
persistently ?

CHAPTER VIII

Give the location of the Galapagos Islands. Describe the tortoise
which Darwin found there. Describe the lizards. Of what kinds
of animals did he find new species ? Define species (see footnote).
Where had Darwin seen other creatures of which these reminded
him ? What question did Darwin ask himself about these new spe-
cies ? When did the Beagle return to England ? W'hat collections
did Darwin now have in hand ? By the use of his collections what
laws did he wish to find ? What were some of the questions which he
asked himself about both the earlier and the later kinds of animals ?
In order to get more facts, what birds did he study, comparing them
with each other ? Describe some of the different kinds of pigeons.
After studying each kind, what conclusion did Darwin come to?
What is the common opinion of naturalists about pigeon ancestors ?
What did every intelligent bird breeder assure him ? How long did
one breeder say it would take to produce any given feather ? How

210 THE NEXT GENERATION

long for head and neck ? What does Darwin say about the work
of sheep breeders in Saxony ? What does Lord Sommerville say
about the success of the breeders ? Even before Mendel and Darwin
lived, what two facts did breeders know about the relation of an-
cestors to descendants ? When Darwin saw how man gets results
by controlling ancestors, what did he wish to know about wild ani-
mals ? What did he ask himself about other laws ? How long
did Darwin study this problem ? What is the name of the book in
which he tried to answer it ? When was the book published ?
Describe the way it was received and the excitement it produced.
Of those who read the book, who were most inclined to accept
Darwin's theory ? When did Darwin die ?

CHAPTER IX

Describe what you yourself have seen in springtime, or else
give the description in the first paragraph. How many elm seeds
were there in one small heap ? How many maple seeds in another ?
How many seeds with their parachutes were counted on one dan-
delion stalk ? What is the condition of the woods in springtime ?
What can you say of the fate of fish eggs in every breeding spot ?
What proportion survive long enough to become fish and to pass
life on to the next generation ? What does Dr. Thompson say
about the multiplication of the cod ? So far as the ocean is con-
cerned, what would be the result ? Give Dr. Thompson's figures
about the oyster. What is the first law of Darwin's five-linked
chain ? When there is such prodigality on every side, when all
must find food or die, what kind of competition follows ? Give
Darwin's second great law. Even though it looks like a peaceful
world, give some facts about the struggle for food and for existence
that goes on constantly. If all eggs were allowed to hatch and if all
young animals lived to old age, what would the result be ? Mention
some of the checks to the prodigality of nature. In the struggle
for existence, which plants and animals have the poorest chance
to live and become ancestors ? What did Darwin notice about the
size and strength of different animals in the same species ? What is
the third law in Darwin's chain ? Show how this law worked when

QUESTIONS 211

rain was withheld in South America. Speak of the birds in snow-
covered Ohio one winter. Why did some live and others die ? What
happened in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, in 1885 ? Describe the result
of the yellow-fever tests in Cuba in 1900. What did Darwin say
is sure to follow because of the law of variation ? Which creatures
will survive ? Give the fourth law in the linked chain. Show how
this law works itself out. What about long legs ? strong claws ?
keen eyesight ? What about power to go without water and to
survive famine ? How do we know that those who are best fitted to
survive are not always the largest, tallest, strongest, etc. ? Give an
illustration from the huge animals of South America. What about
the English sparrow ? Which birds best survive a storm ? How can
you explain the ears of the mole ? Give the final, supreme law of
Darwin's chain. What did Darwin believe about the ancestors of all
the wild animals that live to-day ; that is, how did he think they were
selected ? Apply the five-linked chain to last-year's codfish. Men-
tion some of the points on which all scientists agree. Which of
Darwin's statements do scientists accept with one accord ? What
did Darwin show about creative power ?

CHAPTER X

Describe the gill-slits of a fish (see footnote). Why does a fish
swim with its mouth open ? If it should keep its mouth shut, what
would result ? How does a fish get its needed supply of oxygen ?
Why does a fish die when it is drawn from the water ? Why do we
die when we are held under water ? In which embryos did scientists
expect to find gill-slits ? In which embryo do they always find gill-
slits ? What is an embryo ? Mention the different kinds of creatures
that have gill-slits when they are in the embryo stage. When ani-
mals are to live out of water after birth, what additional apparatus
does the embryo have ? Mention the rudiments of different animals.
What is a rudiment? How did Darwin explain a rudiment? De-
scribe the sacculina. How long does a sacculina live ? Give Darwin's
three statements about rudiments. When we find teeth in the
upper jaw of an embryo calf, what do we know about its ancestors ?
When we find rudimentary legs under the flesh of a full-grown

212 THE NEXT GENERATION

whale, what do we know about its ancestors ? When we find gill-
slits in the embryo of any animal, what does this prove about its
ancestors ? Why is a rudiment called an " ancestral reminiscence "?
Describe the modern whale. What do its rudimentary legs and
its rudimentary teeth prove ? What do its embryo gill-slits prove ?
Taken altogether, what do we learn about the history of ancestral
whale life ? What is structural evidence ? Give Darwin's illustration.
What is embryological evidence ? Where do we find our geological
evidence ? What evidence does geography bring ? What evidence
comes from modern experiments ? Taken altogether, what do the
five kinds of evidence prove ?

CHAPTER XI

How did a certain woman try to make sure that her child should
be musical ? Are children stamped by what the parents are in
themselves or by what the parents compel themselves to do ? How
did the friend know that the daughter would be persistent and not
musical? For how long a time did women in China continue to
bind the feet of their daughters ? During what part of life were the
feet kept cramped ? What effect did the binding have on the feet of
the children of succeeding generations ? What is an acquired char-
acter? (Fordefinition see footnote.) If a woman crimps her hair, what
effect will this have on the hair of her children or of her children's
children ? In what way can curly hair be secured for one's de-
scendants ? Mention certain characters which may be acquired and
which are not passed on by inheritance. Describe trees that
are dwarfed in the gardens of Japan. How did they become so
dwarfed ? Judging by the appearance of the trees, what would one
expect their descendants to be ? In point of fact, is the condition
of being dwarfed passed on by inheritance ? When dogs, sheep, and
horses have their tails cut off for successive generations, what effect
does this have on the tails of their descendants ? W7hat is a mutation ?
Speak of the mutation that appeared in a herd of well-horned cattle
in Paraguay in 1770. Why were the owners pleased with this
hornless animal ? What kind of descendants did it have ? Why
were the owners astonished at results ? What does Darwin tell us

QUESTIONS 213

about the origin of short-legged Ancon sheep ? Why are these
sheep particularly liked by sheep raisers ? Where are they now
found ? Describe Mr. Poulton's family of cats. Describe the dif-
ferent members of the family of the six-fingered boy. What is
meant by polydadylism ? What does brachydactylism mean ? De-
scribe the case of the short-fingered family shown in the diagram.
What do all these facts prove about any character which begins as
a mutation ? What is the difference between an acquired character
and a mutation ? If this mutation should give its owner any ad-
vantage in the struggle for existence, what would be the effect on
succeeding generations ?

CHAPTER XII

Give a few facts about the Hawaiian Islands (see footnote).
Describe the different kinds of land shells that were found on these
islands in 1852 — their color, size, etc. How long and how wide is
the island of Oahu ? What can you say about its mountain range
and its valleys ? How many species of the same family of shells
did John Gulick find on Oahu alone ? Just where did the different
species live ? What can you say about the traveling habits of these
snails ? What did John Gulick do that made his collection priceless
afterwards ? What does he say about his interest in the location of
each shell? What did he discover about the numbers of species
that were close together ? As he gathered his shells and studied, com-
pared, and labeled them, what did he notice about those that lived
closest together? When he had arranged his shells according to
the exact spot they came from, what further did he notice? What
was the first question which he asked himself? What was the
second question ? How long afterwards did Dr. Gulick answer his
own questions ? How was it that nature acted like a careful breeder
on Oahu ? Give the first step in this process ; the second step ; the
third step ; the fourth step. Just why did. each new group of
descendants become slightly different from its own immediate
ancestors ? To make this plain, give the case of seven birds with
beaks of different length. How is the average found (see footnote) ?
What can be said about this law of average in connection with snails ?

214 THE NEXT GENERATION

Give two reasons why there was such an extraordinary number
of species of snails on Hawaii. When colony after colony had
been started in this way, what should we expect to find in regard
to their descendants ? What does Dr. Gulick call any separation
which prevents one colony from mating with another colony ?
What is geographic isolation ? What is food isolation ? What does
genuine isolation of this sort result in? What sets of living crea-
tures are controlled by the law of isolation ?

CHAPTER XIII

In Kansas what special event marked the year 1862 ? What
did one afflicted man write about his experience with potato bugs ?
Where did the ancestors of these beetles come from ? When and
where did they get their first taste of potatoes ? What years are
covered by Dr. Tower's history of the dispersal of Leptinotarsa
decemlineata ? What does this record show ? What road did the
beetles take in traveling from Illinois to Boston ? Give the records
for 1864, 1865, 1868, 1871, 1874, 1875, and 1876. How fast did
the beetles travel ? How long did it take them to make the journey ?
Why were the European nations anxious ? What weapon did Europe
use to save herself ? What was done in Germany and in France ?
Describe what happened in 1876. In this journey what did the
beetles prove about their own environment ? What one thing did
they require ? How much time do most potato bugs spend under-
ground ? What happens to them in the spring ? Why does the farmer
feel discouraged ? What does he do ? Compare the snails of Hawaii
with the potato bugs of America : first, the number of species ;
second, the kinds of food ; third, the methods of travel ; fourth,
the region covered by a single species of snails on Hawaii and by
a single species of potato bugs in America. Put together in this
way, what do these facts show ? Tell what conditions would have
been necessary in order to make many species instead of one
species out of the potato bugs of America.

QUESTIONS 215

CHAPTER XIV

How fast do Leptinotarsa decemlineata multiply ? When does
the egg-laying time come ? Describe the process. How many eggs
are laid in close succession ? What is the entire number laid by one
beetle ? Why do the eggs have to be laid in separate sets ? How
many days are there between the laying of two successive sets ?
When do the larvae begin to eat green things ? How many days are
required to turn a newly hatched larva into a full-grown beetle ready
to lay eggs of its own ? Where did Dr. Tower carry on his experi-
ments ? What did he already know about the starting point of every
kind of beetle ? What did he propose to find out about germ
cells ? In studying the matter of color, how many beetles did
Dr. Tower secure ? Where did they come from ? When they
reached Chicago, where did he put them ? What about the tem-
perature of each breeding place ? During what years did Dr. Tower
carry on his investigations ? After eleven years what had he found
out about the effect of heat and of cold on the color of the spots
and stripes of the beetles ? What did these experiments prove ?
What calamity overtook the beetles ? Before they had been killed
by the heat, what other experiments did Dr. Tower carry on ?
What did he suspect about germ cells being influenced by their
environment ? How many pairs of beetles did he choose in 1902 ?
What did he do with them ? How many eggs did they lay ? What
did he call this set ? What did he do with those six beetles and all
their eggs after that? How many additional eggs did these same
beetles lay ? What was this set called ? What happened to many
of the eggs and many of the larvae of both Lot A and Lot B ?
How many full-grown beetles were produced by lots A and B?
(See footnote.) What was the scientific name of the parents of
these beetles ? Where had they been brought from in the first
place ? When beetles of this species are frightened, what do they do?
When another §pecies, called Leptinotarsa melanothorax, is frightened,
what does it do ? What was it that surprised Dr. Tower about this
lot of beetles ? What had the damp-heat environment done to them
even before they had been laid as eggs ? From the scientific point
of view, what was the most notable part of Dr. Tower's work ?

216 THE NEXT GENERATION

CHAPTER XV

How many unfertilized frogs' eggs did Professor Bataillon use for
the experiment described ? What did he do with them ? How soon
did results begin to appear ? How many of the eggs developed in
normal fashion ? How many of them finally turned themselves into
tadpoles ? Of these, how many lived to become real frogs ? Describe
the oldest of the three. How many cells has the amoeba ? How
does it multiply ? What can you say about the number of cells in
all complex animals ? Mention a few of the different kinds of cells
and the kinds of work they do. Which cells are able to pass life
along from one generation to the next ? How much alike do the
germ cells of different kinds of animals look ? Mention some of the
characters that are stored up for use and packed into their own
particular germ cell. What is the great difference between germ
cells and all other cells of the body ? How much do they do for
the welfare of the body to which they belong? What is the sole
purpose of their existence ? What happens to both the amoeba and
the germ cell if they become dry ? Why is it easy to keep fish cells
from drying up ? What does a mass of fish eggs look like ? For
the benefit of the next generation, how long must germ cells stay in
damp surroundings ? In this respect what special advantage have
fish and frogs ? What is nature's arrangement for keeping embryo
birds and reptiles moist while they develop ? What two things
is the albumen of the egg good for? What two things does the
shell do ? Why are not all animals (ourselves included) supplied
with eggshells, then hatched out when the time comes ?

CHAPTER XVI

During what period of their lives did Dr. Minot study develop-
ing chicks ? How did he do this ? At the end of the first day what
change did he find ? at the end of the second day ? the third day ?
the fourth day ? the fifth day ? What was the condition of the
chick after ten days of growing? From start to finish, in what
does the whole process of growth consist? Mention the figures
that follow each other after the first combined germ cell begins to

QUESTIONS 217

divide. What can you say about the resemblance of different em-
bryos in their earliest stages ? As it grows, how does an animal in
its eggshell get nourishment ? When does an expanding chick
make its way out of its shell ? How long is it from the time when
a hen begins' to sit on her eggs to the time when the chick is hatched ?
When is an animal said to be oviparous ? When an animal is born
alive, what is it called ? Before birth what supplies nourishment to
the developing oviparous animal ? Describe the difference between
the chick and the rabbit after birth. Mention the time it takes for
various animals to develop. \Vhen do cells multiply fastest, before
or after birth ? What have surroundings to do with the welfare of
young and growing creatures ? What was it that made the differ-
ence in the size of the four young tadpoles ? How much does a
normal seven-pound baby gain during the first year of his life ? How
much does he gain during the second year ? After that, how much
until he is fourteen years old ? What two things can a baby do from
the start ? What about the use of all five senses ? Give a brief sketch
of the progress of the baby from stage to stage. What does Dr.
Minot call the first period of a baby's development ? What has
happened during this period ? What does a baby do during its
second period ? Give what you can of Dr. Minot's description of
an eight-months-old baby. When is a baby usually able to walk ?
What does Dr. Minot say about the importance of the health of
the mothers ?

CHAPTER XVII

How many eggs were in the incubator ? Describe the appear-
ance of the chicks when they were hatched. Altogether, how many
chicks came from the eggs ? What happened to the rest of them ?
How many chicks died within four days after the hatching ? When
investigators looked for an explanation of all this, what did they
find ? What conclusion did they come to about the effect of alcohol
on chicks in their shells ? What was Dr. Forel's own conclusion ?
Describe the two sets of tests carried on by Dr. Fere between the
years 1894 and 1903. How often was the same experiment re-
peated ? What did the tests always show about the minds of the
chicks ? What seemed to be the matter with those that had endured

2i8 • THE NEXT GENERATION

the vapor of the alcohol ? How did Dr. Stockard first give alcohol
to his guinea pigs ? What was his second attempt ? Why did he
stop giving it to them through a tube ? Describe his copper tank.
What does Dr. Stockard say about the guinea pigs in the copper
tanks ? How long did they usually stay in the tank ?' During the
rest of the time what kind of air did the guinea pigs breathe ? For
how many days in a week, and for how many months, was this
treatment kept up ? What effect did the fumes have on the guinea
pigs at first ? In the course of a few weeks how did they behave ?
So far as the next generation was concerned, what were the four
kinds of tests ? When neither of the parents was treated with alco-
hol, how many of their children lived? When both parents were
treated with alcohol, what was the fate of all their children ? How
many families did Dr. Gordon study in which both father and
mother used alcohol ? How many children were there in these
families ? How many of these were epileptics ? In twenty other
families where the grandfather as well as both parents used alco-
hol, what was the condition of the offspring ? How many family
records did Dr. Demme investigate in Switzerland ? Give the
record of the children of the ten drinking families. Give the record
of the ten abstaining families. What was Dr. Bezzola's occupa-
tion ? When children were brought to the institution, what did he
often hear about the parents ? What census reports did he study ?
Why did he look up the birthdays of those 8196 feeble-minded
persons ? Which did Dr. Bezzola call the alcohol-rich periods in
Switzerland ? which the alcohol-poor months ? Give the first point
made by Dr. Bezzola's report ; the second point. How much alco-
hol may a person take without running the risk of damaging a
future child ? What does Dr. Bezzola declare about this particular
matter ? What was his conclusion from the studies he made ? Why
should we refrain from blaming a feeble-minded person ?

CHAPTER XVIII

What three questions did Dr. Gulick ask in 1897 ? Who received
these questions ? How many answers came back ? What did Dr.
Gulick do with these answers ? What did the tables show about

QUESTIONS 219

the age when special choices were made ? What report did Dr.
Gulick study in the Eleventh Census of the United States ? What
did he do next ? What do the tables show about the average age
of prisoners ? What is the average duration of sentence of the
American male prisoner ? What, then, is the average age at which
he enters prison ? In closing, what does Dr. Gulick say about the
age at which individuals take to criminal life ? Which period of
human life is most full of fateful import ? 'When the era opens, what
is the condition of the individual ? When it ends, what has the
child become ? What kind of reading and study do 'boys most enjoy
between the ages of fourteen and twenty ? \Vhy do many boys begin
to smoke during this era ? During which years does a girl grow more
attractive — more womanly and gracious ? What is the period of
special instability ? Why is it called the storm-and-stress period ?
What should receive special attention during the adolescent years ?
During what years is a man deciding his destiny ? While he de-
cides his own fate and forms his own habits, what is he doing for
his descendants ?

CHAPTER XIX

How many boys helped Dr. McKeever in his experiments ?
What were their ages ? Why did Dr. McKeever need the help of
these particular boys ? What was he trying to decide about the use
of tobacco ? What machine did he use ? What records does the
sphygmograph keep ? Where is it fastened to the body ? On what
does its needle make a record ? When were the records taken ?
What did they explain ? Give the first statement ; the second state-
ment. What does the first diagram show ? the second diagram ?
Compare these, line by line, with the third diagram. What does the
heartbeat indicate about the changing feelings of the boy ? What
parts of the body are benefited when the heart makes its best record ?
Why are they benefited ? What was done with the sphygmograph
while the different records were being taken on the same boy ?
How long did this unusual vigor last ? Then what happened ? What
. is the objection to slow-moving blood and a low heart record ?
What parts of the body suffer? How long will the slow-pumping
heart stay in charge of the slow-moving blood of the smoker ? What

220 THE NEXT GENERATION

will happen when he takes his next cigarette ? How many ciga-
rettes does the habitual smoker sometimes use a day ? What can
you say about the double character of tobacco ? Describe the case
of Dr. Kellogg's frogs. How much nicotine does it take to kill a
frog ? What was the fate of Homer Leslie ? What is the one most
injurious thing in tobacco ? Describe what takes place when a man
sets fire to his cigarette and smokes it. At what point do the nico-
tine and the smoke part company ? What becomes of the smoke ?
Follow the journey of the nicotine. What occurs as soon as the
nicotine in the blood stream reaches the heart ? When Dr. Seaver
studied the records of smokers and nonsmokers among the students
at Yale, what did he learn about them ? Give Dr. Meylan's con-
clusions. When ignorant people protest against these conclusions,
what are the two horns of the dilemma which they have to choose
between ? Why does this chapter say so little about grown men who
smoke ? When does the smoking habit do a person most harm,
before or after he is twenty-five years old ? Tell what you can of
Mr. Depew's story of his own smoking habit and how he broke it.
In what way does the smoking habit of one generation harm the
next generation ? In what particular ways are sons apt to become
like their fathers ? What connection is there between the tobacco
habit and the alcohol habit ?

CHAPTER XX

Describe the case of the boy from India. What kind of help did
the doctor say he must have during the operation ? How was the
blood sent across from the student to the small boy ? How much
blood did Charlie receive? What was the result? What does Sir
Frederick Treves say about operating on drinkers ? Describe the
drinker mentioned in this chapter, or any other case which you your-
self have seen. Describe the diagram. What is the order in which
brain cells develop in the human embryo ? Which cells are developed
first ? which last ? which part of the brain does alcohol damage
first ? which part last ? Describe the bottle that found its way into
the schoolroom. What was in the bottle ? Why was it in the
schoolroom ? On what does the success of the saloon business de-
pend ? In whom must the appetite for drink be created ? Mention

QUESTIONS 221

ways in which this kind of " missionary work " is done. What ad-
vantage is there in giving free treats to boys ? If boys cannot be
secured as drinkers, what will happen to the liquor business of the
world ? Where did Dr. Lambert go for his facts about all this ?
What made him decide to find out how old people generally are
before they begin to drink ? How many persons answered his
questions ? How many of the two hundred and fifty-nine persons
began to use alcohol before the age of four? between the ages
of six and twelve ? between twelve and sixteen ? between sixteen
and twenty-one ? between twenty-one and thirty ? After thirty how
many were there ? What per cent of those who have the alcohol
habit began to drink before they were twenty -one years old ? If a boy
is free from the habit until he is twenty-one, what are his chances ?

CHAPTER XXI

Point out the vital difference between man and the huge animals
of former times. How did the brain of the largest animals compare
in size with the brain of the smallest man that lives to-day ? Ex-
plain the size of man's brain by the five-linked chain of evolution.
While the brain developed, what other useful part of man was also
developing ? In what ways did man now begin to help himself and
his descendants ? In order to understand man in his early condition,
what part of modern civilization must we sweep away ? Describe the
conditions in which our earliest human ancestors lived. Mention
one or two of the greatest early inventions. How is man supposed
to have made his first fire ? How important to the race was this
discovery ? What constituted the beginnings of architecture ? What
faculties of the mind did early man press into service ? What was
the beginning of our higher mathematics ? In all this what did each
generation gain from the generation that went before ? What do
we mean by " social inheritance " ? In addition to his physical in-
heritance and his social inheritance, in addition to his inventions and
his discoveries, what did the spiritual part of man do for him ? So
far as his past and his future are concerned, in what way is man
superior to all other living creatures ? What is it that gives man
conscious power as he walks the earth ? What does he know about

222 THE NEXT GENERATION

the power of his own will ? What is man willing to do for his fellow
men ? What is man's crown of evolution ? What advantage is it
to man to have a normal, well-trained brain ? In what way may a
man's brain be a disadvantage to him ? How does it happen that
man is able to do himself more harm than can be done to itself
by any other creature ? Speak of the changes that have come
about since men were scattered savages fighting each other. As
groups grew larger, what notion also grew stronger ? Who are the
members of a family ?

CHAPTER XXII

Why must such a book as this take the laws of family health into
account ? Why are people who live together in more danger from
certain diseases than are those who live apart ? Mention a few of the
diseases that threaten those, who live closest together. Of what are
towns and cities made up? On what does the future of every
nation depend ? What is an important motto of modern life ?
For the sake of this generation and the next, what two sets of
laws must one know about ? In former times what was a nation's
watchword ? What is the modern command ? Why is the modern
form of patriotism the nobler kind ? How does a man prove that
he is worthy of the crown which evolution has placed upon him ?

CHAPTER XXIII

In what periodical was the account of the epidemic described
by Dr. Schamberg ? What happened on March 4, 1911? What
blemish did one of the young men have ? If an intelligent doctor
had seen the sore, what would he have said about it ? What occurred
on March 25? How large did the sore become? When did the
second girl discover her two sores ? Where were they located ?
How many cases of the same kind followed each other through
the months of March and April ? In each case what was the cause
of the sore ? What lesson did Dr. Schamberg say this epidemic
should teach ? Why was this special kind of sore worse than any
other ? What did it prove about the condition of the entire body ?
Under what conditions do the microbes of this sore go from person

QUESTIONS 223

to person ? When a cracked mucous membrane comes in contact
with one of the sores, what happens at once ? What is the condition
of things after twelve hours ? How long after the contact will the
first sign of sore show itself ? Why is this sore called the " mark of
the devil " ? As microbes multiply in the new place, what do they
manufacture? What becomes of this poison? What does Dr. Forel
say about the progress of this disease ? How long may the disease
stay latent in the body ? Where may it appear later ? What does
it cause ? What does Dr. Morrow say about this disease ? What
does Dr. Osier say ? Where may mucous patches of the disease
appear ? Why is there so much agitation nowadays against the use
of the public drinking cup ? What is now used instead ? In
watching those who use a public drinking cup, what have you
seen ? If a public drinking cup must be used, what is the one
safe way to drink from it ? Mention some of the laws of protection.
Of all the diseases which come to man, why is this the worst ?

CHAPTER XXIV

Describe the case of the doctor on the night boat going from
Boston to New York. What did the man know about the cause
of his calamity ? Describe Dr. Howard's case of the mother and
the daughter who lost their eyesight. If the woman had known the
facts, by what simple means might she have handled the sheets
and the towels and yet have prevented the microbes from entering
her eyes ? About how many totally blind persons are there in the
United States ? About how many partially blind'persons ? About how
many of them all have been made blind through the gonococcus
microbes ? When did these microbes enter their eyes and cause
blindness ? What does Dr. Neisser say about the conditions of this
blindness in Germany ? How true is the expression " blind from
birth " ? In almost all cases, what is the condition of eyes at birth ?
When does the blindness come ? If the right medicine were used
at once, what would be the result ? What three things does every
state commission for the blind propose to do ? In treating the eyes
of a newborn baby, what should be done first ? Why is a separate
cloth used for each eye ? How is the medicine put into the eye ?

224 THE NEXT GENERATION

What is the medicine and how much of it is used ? Why should
everything be perfectly clean that touches the baby's eyes ? Why
should the dropper be used for no other purpose ? (Lest microbes
from a diseased eye get to the dropper and be passed on to some
other person.) Mention some symptom which shows that the
eyes of the baby are needing the care of a doctor. Why
should the doctor be called at once ? What does this particular
medicine do to any gonococcus microbes that may be in the eye ?
If the eyes are free from these microbes, what objection is there to
using the medicine ? Why should the medicine be used only by
the doctor's order? What progress is being made in the care of
the eyes of babies ? When these microbes reach the tender tissues
of the eye, what do they do as they multiply ? What impression
do these microbes make on the thick skin of the body ? Do they
travel about in the blood stream of the body ? When and where
do they exercise their one power to do harm ? How fast do they
destroy any delicate, moist membrane ? From the starting point
where do they go ? What does the doctor say as they travel from
membrane to membrane ? What do the advancing hosts of microbes
do to the tissues ? Name some of the organs of the body that are
inflamed and scarred by these microbes. What reason has Dr.
Morehead to speak of the " snakiness " of the disease ? What two
questions did students in the University of Pennsylvania ask Dr.
Wilson ? What was his answer ? One after the other, mention all
the rules of prevention you can think of. After each rule give the
reason for it.

CHAPTER XXV

When did Dr. Jordan visit Aosta ? In your own words describe
what he found in Aosta in 1881. Where is cretinism found ? Which
gland is diseased in every cretin ? By what laws is cretinism passed
on from ancestor to descendant ? Why was Dr. Jordan surprised
when he visited Aosta in 1910? What had Aosta done with its
cretins about twenty years before ? So far as the next generation
was concerned, what was the result of putting the cretins into asy-
lums and keeping them separate ? What does Dr. Jordan say about
his search for cretins and his failure to find them ? In closing his

QUESTIONS 225

description what final fact does Dr. Jordan bring out ? What did
he say was the only way to get rid of a next generation of cretins ?
Describe the young man at the piano, whom Dr. Hurty watched.
From what kind of insanity did the superintendent say he suffered ?
Repeat the question which Dr. Hurty asked about the young
man. What did the superintendent answer? How many feeble-
minded persons are there in the United States alone ? What are
the three terms which are applied to feeble-minded persons ? Are
there clearly marked distinctions between different kinds of feeble-
minded persons or do they grade into each other ? How old are
some patients in the Vineland institution ? What is the condition of
their bodies ? What is the condition of their minds ? Tejl a little
of what is done for these mentally weak children. Years ago, when
scientists looked into the stupid faces of feeble-minded persons, what
question did they naturally ask themselves ? When they looked up
family records, what kind of ancestors did they find in each family ?
How far back does the history of the Kallikak family go ? Why
is the real name of the family not given to the public ? Who
was the first Kallikak described ? In what war was he a sol-
dier ? What sort of woman, mentally, was the mother of his
first son ? What was the mental condition of that son ? When this
boy had grown to manhood, what kind of descendants did he
himself have ? Up to the present time how many descendants has
he had ? Of these how many have been normal, healthy people ?
How many have been or are now feeble-minded? Describe the
woman whom the first Kallikak married after the war of the Revolu-
tion was over. What is the total number of their descendants ? Men-
tion some of the noble characteristics of these descendants. How
many of them have been feeble-minded ? In view of the double
record of the descendants of the same man and the two different
women, what do we learn about feeble-mindedness and inheritance ?
Give the laws that govern the inheritance of feeble-mindedness.
How careful are the Vineland people to keep their feeble-minded
men and women separated from each other ? When a feeble-
minded person has received some training, why is it unwise to send
him out into the world to shift for himself ? If the Vineland plan
were carried out all over the world, what would be the result ?

226 THE NEXT GENERATION

CHAPTER XXVI

Why were children working in the cotton mills of England one
hundred years ago ? What were the ages of the children ? When
were they supposed to do their studying ? Give facts about the
pauper children who became workers at the mills. How long at a
stretch did they work ? What wages did they receive ? What does
Robert Blincoe say about his own experiences ? How were children
prevented from running away from the mills ? What did earnest
men and woman finally say about saving the children ? What
occurred in 1799 and 1800 to help the new movement along?
Where did the epidemic spread ? Who suffered most ? What did
doctors say was the cause of the high death rate of the children ?
In response to the agitation, what did the British government do ?
What effect did the law have on conditions of life for children ?
What does Mr. Claxton say about the condition of certain child
workers in 1912 ? Give in your own words what Mrs. Kelley de-
scribes. What does Mr. Potter say he has seen ? Mention some
of the things which overworked children are known to make in
crowded city tenements. What does Miss Goldmark say about the
change in appearance 'of overworked people ? What does Dr. Ellis
say about the physical condition of overworked London weavers ?
What did a military examining physician find in Germany in 1891 ?
What is the general belief about overwork which all nations are
beginning to act upon ?

CHAPTER XXVII

When was machinery invented ? Why did it look as if great
prosperity were at hand ? Why did men, women, and children move
into town ? In what kind of surroundings did they often live ?
Describe the condition of Bethnal Green as given in 1848. How
many miles of dwellings did the town have ? Who were the city
scavengers ? How long did it take the men to go over the ground
once ? Why were the inhabitants of Bethnal Green attacked by dis-
ease microbes ? What did people know about disease microbes in
those days ? When knowledge began to take the place of ignorance,
what did cities themselves begin to do ? What was the first great

QUESTIONS 227

step towards race improvement ? In these days what are some
cities doing in order to be clean ? What is your own city doing in
the line of keeping clean ? When race-improvement people saw
that cleanliness would not do everything, what did they also see
was being done by factory managers and others ? What was their
conclusion about the need of laws to help the oppressed ? What,
then, was the second step taken in the direction of race improvement?
Since protection by law is part of the new order, tell what some of
these laws do to protect people. In addition to cleanliness and
protection by law, what did people say must also be done in the
matter of right surroundings for children? What, then, was the
third step in race improvement called ? In 191 1 what did the United
States government do to help the children ? What does the Chil-
dren's Bureau propose to do ? What have thoughtful people been
noticing about the effect of environment on children ? In Man-
chester, England, over seventy years ago, how many children out
of every thousand died under five years of age ? What helped them
to die so young ? What does Dr. Ashby say about the effect of
measles on healthy children of well-to-do people ; that is, did many
or few of their children die of measles? What about the result
when children in the workhouses and such places had measles ?
Mention some of the diseases given in the table in which poverty
had much to do with the death rate. To what fact do the figures
of the table draw our attention ? Describe the difference between
the condition of the milk supply in Rochester in 1892 and that in
1904. What improvement in the death rate was there in 1904?
What was the explanation of the changed death rate ?

CHAPTER XXVIII

How large an army of defective persons was Ohio supporting
in 1910? Mention some of the kinds of defects included in the
number. How does the condition in Ohio compare with that to be
found elsewhere in the world ? How do we prove that we are kind
to the present generation ? How do we know that we are unkind
to the next generation ? In view of this condition, what con-
clusion has been reached by those who love their fellow men ?

228 THE NEXT GENERATION

What, then, is the fourth great step in the race-improvement series ?
In past ages how much thought did people give to the welfare of
their descendants ? By what laws did those who were least fitted
to survive die in their childhood ? What effect did this have on the
number of healthy and efficient people in each generation ? Describe
the change in living conditions which took place after many ages.
What effect did inferior ancestors have on whole villages of descend-
ants ? Why were disease microbes now able to make havoc among
these descendants ? In those days how much did people know
about prevention and the cause of the havoc ? What great dis-
covery did Pasteur make in 1865 ? What was he studying when
he came upon disease microbes in the silkworm ? Since his time
what have other men discovered in the same direction ? What, then,
is it that has brought us to the parting of the ways ? When we
glance over past records, what do we learn about the numbers of
defectives in former times and their numbers now ? Describe how
it is that through our kindness we have been helping on the mis-
fortunes of the race. What have the fit been doing for the unfit ?
Was it right for us to lengthen the lives of our degenerates and
maintain them in comfort ? What was it that we should not have
done ? To a large extent, whose descendants are now multiplied in
our asylums, our prisons, and our hospitals ? To whom must the
new road which humanity travels be dedicated ? What does com-
mon sense tell us will be the result if we protect children before
they are born ? If we should do this, what would be the result in
the future ? What does race regeneration really mean ? How can
race regeneration come ? What does race regeneration command
each generation to do for the next generation ? What is the noblest
gift which one generation may offer to another ? From whom has
each of us received his standards of life ?

A PARTIAL LIST OF BOOKS USED IN THE
PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME

BATESON, W. Mendel's Principles of Heredity. 1913.

BEZZOLA, Dr. D. Statistische Untersuchungen iiber die Rolle des Alcohols

bei der Entstehung des originaren Schwachsinns. 1902.
BUNGE, G. Alcoholic Poisoning and Degeneration. Journal of Inebriety.

1900. •

CASTLE, W. E. Heredity in Relation to Evolution and Animal Breeding.

191 1.
CASTLE, W. E. Heredity of Coat-Characters in Guinea-Pigs and Rabbits.

1905.

CONN, W. H. The Method of Evolution. 1900.
DARWIN, C. The Origin of Species. 1864.

DARWIN, C. Naturalist's Voyage round the World. Third edition, 1860.
DARWIN, FRANCIS. Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. 1887.
DAVENPORT, C. B. Eugenics. 1910.

DAVENPORT, C. B. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. 1911.
DOCK, L. L. Hygiene and Morality. 1910.
ELLIS, HAVELOCK. The Problem of Race-Regeneration. 1911.
FISHER, IRVING. National Vitality. 1908.
GALTON, F., and SCHUSTER, E. Noteworthy Families. 1906.
GODDARD, H. H. Heredity of Feeble-mindedness. 1911.
GODDARD, H. H. Elimination of Feeble-mindedness. 1911.
GODDARD, H. H. The Menace of the Feeble-minded. 1911.
GODDARD, H. H. The Kallikak Family. 1912.
GOLDMARK, JOSEPHINE. Fatigue and Efficiency. 1912.
GULICK, J. T. Evolution, Racial and Habitudinal. 1905.
HALL, G. S. Adolescence. 1905.
HARWOOD, W. S. New Creations in Plant Life. 1906.
HORSLEY, SIR VICTOR, and STURGE, MARY D. Alcohol and the Human

Body. 1908.

HOWARD, W. L. Plain Facts on Sex Hygiene. 1910.
JORDAN, DAVID STARR. The Heredity of Richard Roe. 1911.
KELLICOTT, W. B. The Social Direction of Human Evolution. 1911.

229

230 THE NEXT GENERATION

METCHNIKOFF, £LIE. The Nature of Man. 1903.

MORROW, PRINCE A. Social Diseases and Marriage. 1904.

PEARSON, KARL. Nature and Nurture. 1910.

STOCKARD, C. R. An Experimental Study of Racial Degeneration in

Mammals treated with Alcohol. Article in Archives of Internal Medicine.

October, 1912.

THOMSON, J. A. Darwinism and Human Life. 1911.
THOMSON, J. A. Heredity. 1908.

TOWER, W. L. Evolution in Chrysomelid Beetles. 1908.
TREASURY OF HUMAN INHERITANCE. Publications of the Francis Gallon

Laboratory for National Eugenics, 1909-1912.
TYLOR, E. B. Primitive Culture. 1874.

INDEX

Key to pronunciation : fate, senate, fat, arm, ask ; mete, event, met, her ;
ice, it ; old, obey, not ; unite, up ; obscure sounds : a, u.

Acquired characters, definition of,
73, n. ; illustrations of, 73, 74, 75;
contrasted with mutations, 80

Adolescent era, 129-135

Alcohol, effect of, on chicks, 118,
119; effect of, on guinea pigs, 1 19 ;
effect of, on descendants, 122-
125; relation of, to feeble-minded-
ness, 122, 125, 186; as a bever-
age, 145-1 52 ; effect of, in surgery,
146; effect of, on brain cells,
146

Amaryllis, new variety of, 29

American Museum of Natural
History, horse bones shown in

34
Amoeba (a me'ba), multiplication of,

101, 103

Ancestral reminiscence, 68
Andalusian fowls,. 7-11; results of

mating, 9 ; color inheritance of,

10
Angleworms studied by Darwin,

43. 44
Annapolis, entrance examinations

for, showing weak heart, 141
Aosta, the cretins of, 181, 182
Arizona, horse bones found in, 38
Ashby, Dr., 199
Austria, 27

Babies, growth of, described by Dr.

Minot, 115; health of, 117; eye

treatment of, 177
Bataillon, Professor, 100
Beagle, 45, 46, 48, 51
Beetles, effect of damp heat upon,

97-99

Bern, families studied in, 122
Bering's Strait, 48
BethnalGreen,condition of, in 1848,

196, 197

Bezzola, Dr., 122, 123, 125
Biffen, Professor R. H., 27
Birds, survival of, in winter, 60 ;

beaks of, in illustration, 85, 86
Blincoe, Robert, 190
Blindness, case of, in hotel, 174;

cause of, 174, 175; prevention

of, 177, 180

Blood, transfusion of, 145, 146
Boll weevil, harm done by, 29
Boston reached by potato bugs, 90
Brachydactylism (brak T dak'ti lizm),

definition of, 77 ; studied through

five generations, 79
Brain, effect of alcohol on, 146-148 ;

inhibition centers of, 147; order

of development of, 147 ; advantage

and disadvantage of, 160; the

crown of evolution, 160
Brontosaurus, i 54
Briinn, 20
Burbank, Luther, 28, 30, 31

Cactus, with thorns and without,

31
Canada invaded by the potato bug,

90
Canneries, children at work in,

'93
Castle, Professor W. E., 12, 13, 14,

1 6, 17

Cats, short-tailed, 75
Chappie, Dr., 147
Characters defined, 12

232

THE NEXT GENERATION

Chicks, study of, by Dr. Minot, no,
in; comparison of, with rabbits,
114; influence of alcohol upon,
1 1 8, 119

Children, description of overworked,
189-195; effect of overworked,
on community, 195 ; protection
of, before birth, 202-204

Civilization, modern and ancient
contrasted, 156

Claxton, Mr., 192

Cleanliness, modern movement to-
ward, 197

Coal mine, boys at work in, 192

Codfish, illustrating prodigality of
nature, 57 ; in illustration of the
five-linked chain, 63

Columbus, 47

Commissions for the blind, work
of, 176, 177

Conversion, age of, 127

Corn, fields of, compared, 27, 28

Correns, 25

Cotton mills, work of children in, 189

Crab, 68

Cretins (kre'tinz), description of, by
Dr. Jordan, 181, 182

Cuba, yellow fever in, 60

Dandelion seeds, 56, 57
Daniels, Secretary, 151
Darwin, Charles, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49,

5'. 52. 53- 55.62, 63, 65, 67
Demm, Dr., 122
Depew, Senator, 143
De Vries, Professor, 25
Dock, Miss Lavinia, 168
Dogfish showing gill-slits, 64
Dominant defined, 1 5
Drinking cup, public, why discarded,

169-170

Edwards, Jonathan, 2, 3

Eggs, of fish, 105-107 ; of birds, 107 ;
importance of, 108, 109; subjected
to alcoholic fumes, 118, 119

Ellis, Dr., 134, 185, 199

Elm tree seeds, 56, 57

Embryo, definition of, 65 ; gill-slits
in, 65 ; resemblances of different
ones in early stages, 112; develop-
ment of, 113

Environment, adaptation of potato
bugs to, 92-94 ; effect of, in
producing species, 95-99 ; for
children, 199; milk as part of,
200 ; effect of, on descendants,
202

Evolution, of the horse, 34-42 ;
shown on hind foot of the horse,
37 ; evidences of, 64-70 ; crown
of, 153, 160

Family, as unit of society, 161 ; po-
sition of, in civilization, 1 62 ; health
of, 162, 164

Feeble-mindedness, 181 ; numbers
suffering from, 183 ; inheritability
of, 185, 188; prevention of, 188

Feet, as bound in China, 73, 74

Fire, making of first, 1 57

Fish, method of their multiplication,
105, 106

Forel, Dr., 118, 119, 168

Fossil bones, definition of, 34 ; reve-
lations made by, 40 ; in South
America, 45, 47

Frogs, eggs of, under treatment,
100; metamorphosis of, 102; ef-
fect of nicotine on, 140

Galapagos Islands, 48, 49, 51

Games, kissing, 165

Gamete (gam'et), 103, 106

Geologist, study of bones by, 39

Germ cells, influence of environ-
ment on, 96, 97 ; union of, 101 ;
purpose of, 103, 104 ; similarities
of, 104; life conditions of, 107,
1 08; multiplication of, in, 112;
damaged by alcohol, 118-125

Germ plasm, significance of, 105

Gill-slits shown in dogfish, 64

Goddard, Dr. H. H., 186

Goiter (goi'ter), 181, 182

Goldmark, Miss, 194

Gonococcus (gon 6 kok'us), 174

Gordon, Dr., 121

Guinea pigs, why used, 12; color
of, 13; length of hair, 14; albino
defined, 14; color inheritance in,
15, 16; combined inheritance in,
17, 18; effect of alcohol upon,
119-121

INDEX

233

Gulick, Dr. J.T., 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87
Gulick, Dr. L. H., 126, 127, 128

Hapsburg jaw, 159

Hawaiian Islands, description of,

81, n.

Heinzendorf, 20
Heredity, Darwin's law of, 62
Hereford cattle, 32
Holstein cattle, 33
Horse, the evolution of, 34-42 ;

ancient and modern compared, 41
Howard, Dr., 173, 174
Hurty, Dr., 182, 183
Hybrid (hi'brid), definition of, 8
Hyracotherium (hi ra ko the'ri um),

Imprisonment, age of, 130

Inheritance, study of, withneighbors,
2 ; study of, through descendants
of Jonathan Edwards, 3 ; study of,
through the Jukes family, 4 ; in
Andalusian fowls, 7-1 1 ; in guinea
pigs, 12-19; m garden peas, 20-
25 ; laws of, put to use, 26; studied
through rudiments, 65-70 ; social,
143, 158; relation of, to feeble-
mindedness, 184-188 ; relation of,
to race regeneration, 201-204

Isolation, as a factor in evolution,
81-87 ; different kinds of, sum-
marized, 87

Japan, dwarfed trees in, 74, 75
Jersey cow, 32, 33
Jordan, Dr. David Starr, 68
Journal of the American Medical

Association, 165
Jukes, the family of, 4 ; expense of,

to New York State, 6

Kallikak family, history of, 186-187
Kansas, invasion of, by the potato

bug, 88

Kelley, Mrs. Florence, 192
Kellogg, Dr., 140
Koko Head, 83
Kukui (koo koo'e) tree, 82

Lambert, Dr. Alexander, 190
Language, beginnings of, 1 56

Loeb, Professor, 100, 101

Leptinotarsa (lep'ti no tar'sa) decem-
lineata (de sem lin e a'ta), environ-
ment for, 88, 94 ; time of, spent
underground, 93

Leptinotarsa melanothorax (mel a no-
tho'rax), as it feigns death, 98, 99

Leptinotarsa multitcenita (mul ti te'-
n! ta), as it feigns death, 98, 99

Lungfish, description of, 71

McKeever, Dr., 136, 137

Manchester, epidemic in, 191

Maple seeds, abundance of, 56, 57

Matthew, Dr., 36, 38, 40

Mendel, Gregor Johann, 20, 22, 23,
24, 25, 54; laws of, stated, 24

Mendelism, 24

Meylan, Dr., 142

Microbes, and kissing, 165, 166; and
blindness, 173, 174, 176; of gono-
coccus, methods of travel of, 178 ;
of disease, discovery of, 202

Minot, Dr., no, 115, 116, 117

Mississippi River crossed by the
potato bug, 90

Morehead, Dr., 179

Morrow, Dr., 168, 172

Mutations, definition of, 75; as
studied by Hugo de Vries, 78 ;
as contrasted with acquired char-
acters, 80 ; varieties of, 99

National Association of British and

Irish Millers, 26, 27
Nebraska, horse bones found in, 38
Neisser, Dr., 174
Nicotine, and adolescence, 136, 144 ;

course taken by, to reach heart,

141
North America, 48

Oahu, island of, 81, 82, 93

Ohio, effect of winter in, on birds, 60

Omaha, potato bug starts eastward

from, 89, 91, 92

Oregon, horse bones found in, 38
" Origin of Species," publication of,

Osborn, H. F., 39
Osier, Dr., 168
Oviparous (6 vip'a rus), 115

234

THE NEXT GENERATION

Oxygen, how secured by fish and

by land animals, 64, 65
Oysters, illustrating prodigality of

nature, 58

Paleontologist (pa le on tol'o jist),
work of, 40

Paraguay, 75

Pasteur, Louis, 202

Patriotism, modern type of, 164

Peas, color inheritance in, 21 ; domi-
nant and recessive characters of,
22 ; inheritance of seed characters
in, 23

Pig, Poland China, i

Pigeons, different kinds of, 51, 52

Plum, development of, 31

Plymouth, typhoid epidemic in, 60

Polydactylism (pol i dak'ti lizm), il-
lustration of, 76 ; definition of, 77

Poppy, improvement of, 30

Potato, increased value of, 29

Potato bugs, migrations of, 88-94 ;
comparison of, with Hawaiian
snails, 93, 94

Potter, Mr., 193

Poulton, Mr., 76

Prodigality, Darwin's law of, 58

Pure-bred, definition of, 18

Rabbit, generations of, each year, 12 ;
condition of, at birth, 114

Race improvement, three steps in,
196-199

Race regeneration, 201, 204

Recessive character defined, 1 5

Rochester, clean milk in, 200

Rorqual, giant whale, 69

Rudiments, definition of, 65 ; in
calves, 65 ; in the whale, 65; Dar-
win's statements about, 67 ; prov-
ing history of whale, 67

Sacculina (sak u H'na), description
of, 66, 67

Schamberg, Dr., 165, 166

Scott, Professor, 77

Seaver, Dr., 141

Sex, significance of, 162

Sheep, varieties of, 31, 32; short-
legged, 76

Shoes, Chinese, 73

Snail shells, studied by Dr. Gulick,
81-87; reasons for so -many
species of, 87

Social inheritance, 143

Sommerville, Lord, on sheep breed-
ing. 54

South America, 45, 48, 49, 51 ; size
of animals in, 47 ; death of ani-
mals in, for lack of water, 60

Spargo, Dr., 199

Species, description of, 50, n.; in-
fluence of environment on, 95, 99

Spencer, Herbert, reference to,
61, n.

Sperm cells, 106, 107

Sphygmograph (sfig'mo graf), tests
with, on tobacco users, 136-139

State Liquor Dealers of Ohio, 149

Stockard, Dr., 119, 121

Struggle for existence, the law of,

58,59

Survival of the fittest, the law of, 61
Switzerland, studies of feeble-
mindedness made in, 122, 123
Syphilis (sif i ITs), methods of com-
munication of, 166-168; protec-
tion from, 171

Tadpole, from unfertilized egg, 100,
101 ; as influenced by environ-
ment, 114

Tertiary Bad Lands, mention of, 40
Thompson, Dr., 57, 58
Thyroid (thi'roid) gland, 181
Tobacco, why used by boys, 132;
effect of, on heart action, 136,
139; double nature of, 140; ef-
fect of, on Yale students, 141-;
use of, studied by Dr. Meylan, 142
Tower, Dr., 80, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96,

97 > 98, 99
Toxodon (tok'so don), description

of, 46
Treves, Sir Frederick, 146

University of Chicago, The, 96

Variation, Darwin's law of, 60
Vertebrates, evidences of similarity
in, 70 ; individual life of, how
started, 101 ; four statements in
regard to, 113

INDEX

235

Vineland, as " a great human labora-
tory," 183-185 ; methods adopted
by, 183, 184, 188

Viviparous (vl vip'arus), 115

Watt, James, 1 57
Weismann, Professor, 73, 105
West Point, failure in entrance ex-
aminations to, 141

Whale, its double change, 68
Wheat, variety in heads, 26 ; Pro-
fessor Biffen's work with, 27
Wilson, Dr., 179
Wirthwein Hall, 149

Zoological Laboratory of Harvard

University, 12
Zoologist, definition of, 65
Zygote (zl'got), definition of, io6n.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING:
THREMMATOLOGY

By EUGENE DAVENPORT, Dean of the College of Agriculture, Director of the
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It is therefore a book for both the student of agriculture in
college and the practical breeder on the farm.

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matology in the University of Illinois

8vo, cloth, 321 pages, illustrated, $1.25

THE aim of this work is to stimulate a widespread interest
in domesticated animals and plants — to account for their origin,
describe their life in the wild, explain their appropriation by man,
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methods and principles of their further improvement — and,
incidentally, to explain heredity in such a simple way as to
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The literature of this subject is too intensely technical for the
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reader.

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schools, and promoting them to one of practical usefulness and cor-
responding esteem.

The book is intended for high schools and normal schools, and
for short courses in colleges.

GINN AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS

A TEXT-BOOK IN GENERAL
ZOOLOGY

By HENRY R. LINVILLE, Head of the Department of Biology, Jamaica
High School, New York City, and HENRY A. KELLY, Di-
rector of the Department of Biology and Nature
Study, Ethical Culture School, New York City

462, pages, illustrated, $1.50

A exposition of the science of zoology, presented without the inter-
polation of a laboratory guide.
Four years spent in careful examination of the original sources
have resulted in a book filled with valuable material. The authors,
through their extended service as teachers of biology in secondary
schools, are well equipped for the task of writing a text-book designed,
as this one is, chiefly for high-school use, although intended also to be
available for elementary college classes.

The structure, the physiology, and the natural history of selected
types of animals are described with accuracy and in language easily
understood by young students.

The treatment of the subject is broad, and the inductive method is
employed so far as each class and phylum of invertebrate animals is
concerned. The definition of a group is not given until the student's
conception of the group characters has grown to the point where the
definition forms the fitting end to the logical process involved in the
exposition.

The Insecta are discussed in the first chapters, and after the remainder
of the Arthropoda are described, the other invertebrate phyla follow in
a descending series, ending with the Protozoa. Then, beginning with
the fishes, the order ascends to the mammals and closes with man.

A large portion of the book is devoted to the insects and vertebrates,
because young students are more familiar with these groups and so take
greater interest in them. The less known, however, are treated with care,
the different features of morphology, physiology, and relation to envi-
ronment being maintained in good measure throughout.

The book includes two hundred and thirty-three illustrations.

169

GINN & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

FOR HIGH SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

BOTANY

Bergen : Elements of Botany. With Key and Flora (Revised

Edition) $1.30

Without Key and Flora

Bergen : Essentials of Botany. With Key and Flora

Without Key and Flora

Bergen : Foundations of Botany. With Key and Flora

Without Key and Flora
Bergen : A Laboratory and Field Manual of Botany
Bergen : Notebook to accompany Bergen's Botanies
Bergen and Caldwell : Practical Botany ....
Bergen and Davis : Principles of Botany

.00
.50
.20
•5°

.20

.90

•45
•3°
.50

Clute : Laboratory Botany 75

Frye and Rigg : Laboratory Exercises in Elementary Botany .60

Meier : Herbarium and Plant Description 65

Meier: Plant Study (Revised Edition) 75

Nelson : Spring Flora of the Intermountain States 75

Penhallow: Manual of North American Gymnosperms . . 4.50
Pepoon : Representative Plants 60

ZOOLOGY

Linville and Kelly: Textbook in General Zoology . . . . 1.50
Linville and Kelly : Guide for Laboratory and Field Work

in Zoology 35

Meier: Animal Study 75

Pratt: Course in Invertebrate Zoology 1.25

Pratt: Course in Vertebrate Zoology 1.50

Sanderson and Jackson : Elementary Entomology .... 2.00

PHYSIOLOGY

Blaisdell : Life and Health . .90

Blaisdell: Practical Physiology i.io

Brown: Physiology for the Laboratory ' . . .75

Hough and Sedgvvick : The Human Mechanism .... 2.00

Volume I 1.25

Volume II 1.25

SUPPLEMENT TO
THE NEXT GENERATION

FRANCES GULICK JEWETT

GINN AND COMPANY

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON

ADDITIONAL FACTS ABOUT RACE HEALTH

Recently a series of thirteen questions was sent to the college Young
Men's Christian Associations of the United States. It was desired to
know whether or not our college students are being taught about such
laws of right living as pertain to personal morality and to race health.

Answers came from sixty-three prominent colleges and universities,
located in all parts of the country. Dr. Exner's report l says : " The
replies show that every one of the sixty-three institutions from which
replies were received make some provision for educating students in
these matters." The report also shows that this education is of great
advantage to the universities, although, as stated, " only one of these
gives the result in figures. This is a large eastern institution which one
of our strongest lecturers has visited regularly for four years, and where
the college Association has done effective work with the use of literature.
From this institution the report is that venereal disease has decreased
80 per cent, . . . that the attitude of coarseness and vulgarity toward
the subject of sex has given place to serious respect, and that the whole
moral tone of the institution has been changed. This report comes from
reliable and conservative sources, and the figures are obtained through
the university physician."

Other quotations from other institutions combine to prove that when
young people know the facts they are usually ready to respond with
right living. It is evident, then, that ignorance and thoughtlessness
are largely responsible for the present widespread dispersion of such
diseases as peculiarly imperil the future of the race.

" The Next Generation " was written to help remove this ignorance,
and this Supplement to the book is presented separately because the
facts given here are not for classroom use or for public discussion. It
is important, however, that they should be read by all who are prepared

1 " Facts Relating to Sex Education in Colleges and Universities."
Compiled by M. J. Exner, M.D., Secretary Student Department of the
International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations.

t iii

iv THE NEXT GENERATION

for them through acquaintance with such material as is given in " The
Next Generation." It is preferable that the reading of these facts should
come after and not before the book itself is studied.

Chapters XXIII and XXIV of "The Next Generation" give infor-
mation about the contagious nature of two diseases, syphilis and gonor-
rhea, which, at the present time, are more destructive to the race than
any other forms of disease from which humanity suffers.

Syphilis is caused by a microbe called Spirochaeta pallida. This
microbe may be transmitted from person to person through abrasions
of the skin, as shown in Chapter XXIII, and it is likely to be found
in the bodies of those who live immoral lives. Syphilis may ruin not
only the diseased man, but also his wife, his children, and his children's
children. This is the one disease of man that travels by inheritance from
one generation to the next.

Dr. Morrow says : " Fully one third of all syphilitic children born alive
die within the first six months," or, " escaping early death, they may
yet suffer from the disease in their twentieth or thirtieth year, or even
later."

Dr. Hodge writes : " The cough spray of a syphilitic may be more
dangerous than the discharge of a gun into a person's face."

No one knows whence the disease first came, but all know that at
present fallen women give it to men who visit them ; that these men
pass the disease on to healthy women whom they marry ; that, once it
has entered the stream of family life, no power of man can keep it from
doing its work of devastation. All know that wives thus diseased become
permanent invalids ; that they endure surgical operations and are not
cured ; that their babies die needlessly, and that other little ones live
to suffer.

In such cases a mother often blames herself for the endless chain of
woe that has encircled herself and her babies. She does not know that
generally the cause of it all is the disease caught in his ignorant youth
by the man she married — a man who thought he was cured before the
wedding day came.

Until recently young men and women have been allowed to pass
through the adolescent era and to enter the life of maturity utterly igno-
rant of their temptations and their dangers. For the safety of the race
and for their own safety these guardians of the stream of life should
know how to protect themselves.

ADDITIONAL FACTS ABOUT RACE HEALTH v

Many women learn the lesson too late. It was of such a woman that
my friend spoke. She said : " I knew her as a girl, healthy and vig-
orous, and I knew her when she died, a wreck. She was married at
nineteen. He was a handsome, dashing fellow. They had two children.
In course of lime she began to be ailing. She grew worse, suffered
terribly, and at last the end came. We were all in the room — her
mother, her sister, and I. She was lying back on her pillow, barely
breathing, when her husband came in. An expression of horror swept
across her face. She half raised herself on her elbow, pointed her finger
toward him, and in a husky whisper said : " You did it, and you know
it. You 'ye killed me." Then she fell back dead.

It is because of cases like this one (and they might be multiplied by
the tens of thousands) that state after state of the United States is passing
the law that any person about to be married shall first secure a medical
certificate stating that the bearer of it has no contagious disease.

As soon as women realize the need, they themselves will insist on
this. Even now some intelligent fathers require such a certificate of the
men who wish to marry their daughters. And every healthy man is
glad and proud to be able to give it. In course of time the demand will
be universal. In the meantime let a girl refuse the intimate companion-
ship of any man who is morally weak. Let her refuse to marry him.
The chances are that such men are also physically diseased.

Practically all women who lead immoral lives are diseased some of the
time, and some of them all the time. They are centers of infection. On
the average, such women live about six years after beginning to lead this life.

The following is a true family history. It was .told to me by one who
knew the persons.

The father of the family had committed two sins — one against him-
self, the other against his family. I state them side by side for the sake
of comparison. In his early manhood he had been immoral and con-
tracted syphilis ; he was treated by the doctors and counted himself well.
After this he married. Thirty years later he began to lose control of
his judgment. In business, where he had been keen-sighted before,
he now made strange mistakes — • slight at first but increasingly serious.
Months passed and his mind grew constantly less efficient, until at last
he could be trusted with no business whatever.

Finally, he lost his mind so completely that he was put into an insane
asylum. The cause of it was the disease taken when he sowed wild oats

vi THE NEXT GENERATION

in his youth, and which he harbored in his system until, as old age
approached, his body lost its power of resistance. The lurking disease
then gained the upper hand and conquered him. Thus it was that the
man's own sin defeated him.

In addition he dragged others down with him. The beautiful woman
whom he married was ignorant of his past history and entirely ignorant
of the laws of family health. They had several children. The first two
were syphilitic and died at birth. The diseased germ cells of the father
explained this.

The third baby seemed normal until he was four years old, when he
showed syphilitic symptoms and mercifully died shortly afterwards.

The fourth child is still living with his mother in New England. He
is thirteen years old. Until a year ago he was unusually bright. He at-
tended school and did remarkably well for a while. Then a cloud began
to show itself. Little by little it is spreading over his whole mind. He
still gets out his geography with pride and tells you facts he once learned.
He tries to learn more facts, but the power is gone. He has had to stop
going to school, and each day his mind becomes more vacant.

His mother watches the change in agony, but she is helpless. Her
only son is being swept beyond her reach, and she knows it. At last also
she knows the cause. She knows what it is that doomed him. She
knows why all her children have suffered such ruin. She knows that
in each case destruction came through the father.

This, then, was the greatest sin of the man — not that he destroyed
himself, although this was sad enough, but that he crushed the lives of
his innocent wife and his helpless children. And the reason he did it
was that he did not know the danger and that he did not control him-
self in his youth. He was ignorant.

This is but a single instance where thousands might be given.

No right-minded woman would, with her own hands, prepare herself
for cruel suffering; neither would she willfully kill her baby. Yet any
woman who, knowing the danger, allows herself to marry a man who is
not morally upright and physically pure invites the tragedy and the
suffering which lies in wait for her and for her children.

No right-minded man would, willfully and with his own hands, kill his
helpless baby, yet any man who, knowing the facts, dares to run the
risk of contracting this dread disease is as guilty as if he had killed his
own children with his own hands.

ADDITIONAL FACTS ABOUT RACE HEALTH vii

The second of these terrible diseases — the one which may produce
blindness at birth — is named gonorrhea. It is caused by the gonococcus
microbe, and it starts in the same general way as syphilis. The great
source of both is with those who live immoral lives. Very often the
same person has both diseases.

The gonococcus microbe needs no broken surface through which
to travel; neither does it produce a visible sore, as does syphilis.
When a moist membrane, diseased with gonococcus microbes, touches a
healthy, moist membrane, the microbes go across and begin their work
of destruction. From their starting point they creep upward in the
body, traveling over the lining membrane of one slender tube after
another, carrying disease to each, until at last they reach the vital organs.
In tens of thousands of cases the inflammation within the tubes is so
extreme that they become hopelessly scarred, and because they are
scarred they contract and at last close entirely. After this no germ cell
is able to pass through them from the body, and all chance for the
beginning of another generation is cut off. In other words, the person
becomes sterile.

In one important respect this disease differs from certain other con-
tagious diseases. Persons who have had smallpox are considered safe
from another attack. So also are those who have had measles and
mumps and scarlet fever. But with this disease the mere fact that a
person has had it once increases the chance of his having it again if he
is again exposed to it. And then, as Dr. Forel says, " When this disease
becomes chronic, relapses of the acute stage often occur without fresh
infection." He adds : " In women the results of gonorrhea are, if pos-
sible, still worse than in men. Women affected with chronic gonorrhea
generally become sterile."

Already society is trying to protect itself against smallpox and leprosy,
against whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhoid
fever, yellow fever, and other communicable diseases. And yet there
still remain these other two diseases which at present hold more suffering
for this generation and the next than all the other diseases combined.
In view of this situation, we now know that the prevention of these two
diseases is the most important hygienic duty which faces the present
generation. We know that, as a whole, the rising generation is clear-
headed and sane, and that when it learns the facts, it will protect itself
by prevention. It is evident, then, that the health and safety of the nation

viii THE NEXT GENERATION

depend on what the young people of the land know and do not know
concerning certain diseases which are so closely connected with evil
that, until recently, their names have not been so much as mentioned
except by scientists, doctors, and nurses.

ADVICE FOR GIRLS

The following was written about girls in England and for their special
use, but it applies equally well to girls everywhere else. I quote the
words as given.

" No girl can afford to accept attentions from any unknown man, how-
ever well dressed or well mannered he may be. This is especially true
when girls are traveling from city to city, or from one part of a city to
another part of the same city.

" Many girls have been entrapped into white slavery in England
during the past months through the most diabolical methods. A woman
dressed as a professional nurse has trapped a number. Men white slavers
with drugged handkerchiefs or drugged flowers have trapped many.
One large telephone company has issued warnings to all young women
operators, telling them to pay no attention to messages received over
the wires calling them to certain places on account of the illness of a
relative or friend, etc."

One society has sent out printed warnings. Every girl in every
country should give heed to them. The following are the warnings :

" Never speak to strangers, either men or women, in the street, in
shops, in stations, in trains, in lonely country roads, or in places of
amusement.

" Never ask the way of any but officials on duty, such as policemen,
railway officials, or postmen.

" Never loiter or stand about alone in the streets, and if accosted by
a stranger (whether man or woman), walk as quickly as possible to the
nearest policeman.

" Never stay to help a woman who apparently faints in the street,
but call a policeman at once.

" Never accept an invitation to join a Sunday School or Bible class,
given by strangers, even if they are wearing a clerical dress.

" Never accept a ride offered by a stranger in a motor, a taxicab, or
a vehicle of any description.

ADDITIONAL FACTS ABOUT RACE HEALTH ix

" Never enter any house,, restaurant, or place of amusement on the
invitation of a stranger.

" Never go with a stranger (even if dressed as a hospital nurse) or
believe stories of relatives having suffered from an accident or being
suddenly taken ill. This is a common device to kidnap girls.

" Never accept sweets, food, or a glass of water or smell flowers offered
by a stranger. So many things can contain drugs.

" Never take a situation through advertisements either in England or
abroad without first finding out about it through responsible people.

" Never go to London or any large town for even one night without
knowing of some safe lodging."

In all parts of the world to-day loyal-hearted men and women are
doing what they can to help the girls save themselves.

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