FRUITS OF RACE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 83, 3 September 1914, Page 3

FRUITS OF RACE.

THE MOST PRECIOUS HERITAGE

IV —l'rosi Association. AllcklttMll, iScptl'lHlH'V 1

''Heredity was the subject on which Dr. Davenport professor of Experimental Biology at the Carnegie institute in Washington, addressed a large audience at. St. Andrew's Hall last night. Dr, Davenport said his first impulse when invited to come to New Zealand was to reply that it was impossible 1 for hiin to get away; but as the idea came a little more familiar, he saw clearly tOiat there were several good reasons why he should make the trip. One of them was that New Zealanders were interested in the bleeding of animals, and had created one of the great new breeds of Sheep—the Corriedale—and he knew that New Zealanders were interested in the application of tile'laws of heredity and eugenics to man.

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. The early colonists in America, Sprung from good old Anglo-Saxon stock, and the influence of this strain was apparent to-day. On the other hand, there had beeri some marriages of feebleminded people, and also of convicts I wfl gent out in the 18th century to ' America, and they were the particular eatKe of social disturbances in certain &jfhmunities in the Central States. Tliey iiiid laws against certain classes marrying in the United States, but unfortunately they could not he enforced. Ho pointed out the need for keeping the race pure, so that they would leave behind them the heritage to their children] that was the most precious of all.