=Are the Effects of Training Inherited?--=Breeders and trainers very commonly believe that the offspring of trained animals inherit in some measure the effects of the training. Thus the increased speed of the American trotting horse is often pointed to as strong evidence of such transmission. According to W. H. Brewer, the earliest authentic record of a mile in three minutes was made in 1818. The improvement, approximately by decades, from that time was as follows: During 1st decade after 1818, improved to 2:34 2nd " " " " " 2:31-1/2 3rd " " " " " 2:29-1/2 4th " " " " " 2:24-1/2 5th " " " " " 2:17-1/2 6th " " " " " 2:13-1/2 7th " " " " " 2:08-1/2 By 1892, the date of Professor Brewer's publications (See _Agricultural Science_, Vol. 4, 1892) the record had reached 2:08-1/2. Since then it has been lowered still further. On the face of it this looks like a good case of inheritance of training, and Brewer himself believed it such. If so this would mean that colts of a highly trained trotter would be faster than they would have been if their parent had remained untrained. It is impossible to get positive proof in the case of any trained horse since there is no way of establishing just how speedy the progeny would have been had the parent remained untrained. If it could be shown that colts sired by a trotter late in life were on the whole faster than those sired by the same father when younger and as yet not highly exercised in trotting, then the facts might give some evidence of value, but unfortunately no such records are available. On the other hand, even ignoring the fact that improvement in track and sulky are probably the biggest items in the shortening of records in recent times, _selection_ instead of inheritance of the effects of training will equally well account for any innate progress in trotting. And since, as pointed out by Professor Ritter, there are even more striking cases of similar improvements in other fields, such as college athletics, where the factor of use-inheritance is entirely precluded, it is wholly unnecessary to postulate it in the case of the trotter. For example an inspection of the records of college athletics for the last thirty-five years in running, hurdling, pole-vaulting, jumping, putting the shot, etc., shows on the whole a steady advance year by year. Moreover, the greatest improvement has occurred in those events in which skill and practise count for most together with selection of the inherently ablest candidate for the events. But in the case of athletics the improvements shown in thirty-five years have all come within a single generation and hence the inheritance of the effects of training is ruled out as a factor. Selection and improved training are the only factors operative.