The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, September 5, 1914. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1293, 5 September 1914, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, September 5, 1914. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The strict censorship of war news leaves much to speculation. We are told, however, that the enemy is gradually moving down iu Vshaped formation, its apex on Paris and that the Allies, represented in a huge crescent, are compelling the Germans to pay an awful sacrifice for each forward movement. Reinforcements of the enemy are being sent forward to hold the lines of communication in Belgium and the north. One is lead to ask : Where is the strength of the French Army and what is the object of allowing the enemy to press forward without giving battle? Are the Germans beingled into a trap from which it may be impossible to escape ? Surely there is some great scheme afoot of which we have no present knowledge. The British troops, a comparative handful iu the great struggle, are doing famously and are upholding the glorious traditions of the past. The Russians in German-Austrian territory have suffered their first set-back, which is not of a serious nature, but they will keep the Austrians and Germans busy in that quarter. The Japanese Navy has completely blockaded Kaiochau, and have swept the sea in the locality of a thousand mines. There are a few German cruisers at large which have yet to be accounted for. Of the war news coming through it cannot be said that the worst happenings are denied us, and probably the good is withheld. We can await results with the utmost confidence in the ultimate success of the Allies bottling up process.

Dr. Davenport, Professor of Experimental Biology at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, who is attending the Science Conference, speaking at Auckland this week on the subject of “ Heredity in relation to Eugenics,” said “ What was heredity ? If they asked the man on the street he would say the principle

by which children got their traits from their parents, but strictly this popular idea of heredity was not correct. They did not inherit from their parents, but really from their races. For instance, a negro got bis black colour from his race, and so on. The science of heredity might be definitely described as that which told them how racial characteristics reappeared in the children of two dissimilar parents, and how they appeared again in the grand-children. Racial characteristics do not pass as such from one generation to another, the only thing which passes being the germ or reproductive cells. In such germ cells aud plasms there were determining characteristics which were called ‘determiners,’ and these were the only things which were inherited. Formerly it was thought the children received their characters from their parents, but to-day it was recognised that the different characteristics were inherited independently of each other, and scientists now came to the conclusion that for every character which the body developed there were ‘determiners.’ There were ‘determiners’ for the colour of hair, eyes, etc. ; for mental attributes, moral attributes, and the resistauce of diseases. He pointed out that all people did not possess these ‘determiners’ in the same degree aud in many people there were what he termed many inactive characteristics. When both parents were feeble-minded their children would be the same. It was very difficult for a feebleminded man to marry other than a feeble-minded woman, and the (ertility of such a man was often very great. This constituted one of the greatest social problems. It might be that one parent did not know the other’s ancestors possessed some undesirable traits, and possibly there might be a union of two defective germ cells. For the most part-young people when getting married had little regard to the heredity traits of each other. They were attracted by some trivial circumstance, but well-experienced parents had always the idea of marriages for their children with good families. The early colonists in America sprang from good old AngloSaxon stock, aud the influence of this strain was apparent to-day. On the other hand there had been some marriages of feeble-minded people, and also of convicts sent out in the iSth century to America, and they were the particular cause ol social disturbances in certain communities in the central States. They had laws against certain classes marrying in the United States, but unfortunately they could not be enforced.” He pointed out the need for keeping the race pure so that they would leave behind them a heritgae to their children that was the most precious of all.