; just
as environment in the ages past changed the foot of the evolving horse
from a flat, "cushiony" foot with many toes (much needed in the soft
bog of his earlier existence) into the "hoof foot" of later days, when
harder soil and necessity for greater fleetness, assisted by some sort
of "selection" and "survival," conspired to give us the foot of our
modern horse, and this story is all plainly and serially told in the
fossil and other remains found in our own hemisphere. It would appear
that many, many generations of education and environment are required
to influence markedly the established and settled train of heredity
regarding any particular element or characteristic in any particular
line or lines of hereditary tendencies.

EUGENIC SUPERSTITION

There is probably more misinformation in the minds of the people on
the subject of "maternal impressions" and "birthmarks" than any other
scientific or medical subject. The popular belief that, if a pregnant
woman should see an ugly sight or pass through some terrifying
experience, in some mysterious way her unborn child would be "marked,"
deformed, or in some way show some blemish at birth, is a time-honored
and ancient belief.

Such unscientific and unwarranted teaching has been handed down
from mother to daughter through the ages, while the poor, misguided
souls of expectant women have suffered untold remorse, heaped blame
upon themselves, lived lives literally cursed with fear and
dread--veritable slaves to superstition and bondage--all because of
the simple fact that a certain percentage of all children born in this
world have sustained some sort of an injury or "embryological
accident" during the first days of fetal existence. For instance, take
the common birthmark of a patch of reddened skin on the face, brow, or
neck. As soon as the baby is born, the worried mother asks in anxious
tones: "Doctor, is it all right, is it perfect, has it got any
birthmarks?" On being told that the baby has a round, red patch on its
left brow, the ever-ready statement of the mother comes forth: "Yes, I
knew I'd mark it, I was picking berries one day about three months
ago, and I ate and ate, until I suddenly remembered I might mark my
baby, and before I knew what I was doing, I touched my brow and I just
knew I had marked my baby." Do you know, reader, that that birthmark
was present fully four months before she passed through that
experience in the berry patch? And yet so w