other side. It should be a
satisfaction to mothers to know that their children will not be marked
or injured by untoward events in the antenatal days; that if the
child's heredity can not be changed for the better, neither can it be
changed for the worse.

The prenatal culturists and maternal-impressionists are trying to place
on her a responsibility which she need not bear. Obviously, it is the
mother who is most nearly concerned with the bogy of maternal
impressions, and it should make for her peace of mind to know that it is
nothing more than a bogy. It is important for the expectant mother to
keep herself in as nearly perfect condition as possible, both physically
and mentally. Her bodily mechanism will then run smoothly, and the child
will get from her blood the nourishment needed for its development.
Beyond that there is nothing the mother can do to influence the
development of her child.

There is another and somewhat similar fallacy which deserves a passing
word, although it is of more concern to the livestock breeder than to
the eugenist. It is called telegony and is, briefly, this: that
conception by a female results in a definite modification of her
germ-plasm from the influence of the male, and that this modification
will be shown in the offspring she may subsequently bear to a second
male. The only case where it is often invoked in the human race is in
miscegenation. A white woman has been married to a Negro, for instance,
and has borne one or more mulatto offspring. Subsequently, she mates
with a white man; but her children by him, instead of being pure white,
it is alleged, will be also mulattoes. The idea of telegony, the
persistent influence of the first mating, may be invoked to explain this
discrepancy.

It is a pure myth. There is no good evidence[29] to support it, and
there is abundant evidence to contradict it. Telegony is still believed
by many animal breeders, but it has no place in science. In such a case
as the one quoted, the explanation is undoubtedly that the supposed
father is not the real one; and this explanation will dispose of all
other cases of telegony which can not be explained, as in most instances
they can be, by the mixed ancestry of the offspring and the innate
tendency of all living things to vary.

Now to sum up this long chapter. We started with a consideration of the
germ-plasm, the physical basis of life; pointing out that it is
continuous from generation to generatio