An analysis of the case of a child shuddering at the sight of peaches is of interest in this connection. The child showed the greatest aversion to peaches, particularly to the fuzzy covering. The mother's explanation was that peaches were unusually plentiful the year the child was born and that she had worked hour after hour at peeling and canning peaches shortly before his birth until she had become thoroughly sick of them. This acquired aversion on her part she believed had been transferred to the child. A few questions revealed the fact, however, that the mother, herself, had never liked peaches and when asked if they were distasteful to any other member of her own family she exclaimed, "Oh, yes, my mother would shudder and shake if a peach were brought near her." And there we have it. The idiosyncrasy was an inherited one as many similar peculiarities are. The mental impression produced in the mother by her own experience with peaches had nothing to do with its occurrence in the child. Very frequently also one encounters the mother who is sure she has engendered musical ability in her child by constant practise and study of music during pregnancy. The child is musical; what better evidence does one want! It seems never to occur to such a mother that the child is musically inclined because she herself is, as is evinced by her own desire in the matter even if she is not a skillful performer. When we take into account the extreme credulity of many people, the unconscious tendency of mankind to give a dramatic interpretation to events where causes are not certainly known, the hosts of coincidences that occur in life, and the multitude of cases where something should happen but nothing does, we are compelled to believe that the whole matter of direct specific influence of the mother's mind on the developing fetus is a myth. After seeing the conditions which prevail in Mendelism, for example, it will take strong faith to believe that a mother with duplex brown eyes can "think" or "will" blue eyes on her baby, yet this would be a mild procedure compared to some we are asked to accept by believers in the transmission of maternal impressions. Most of all, however, when we recall the actual relation between the embryo and the mother--a narrow umbilical cord is the sole means of communication between the two--the physical impossibility of a connection between some particular mental happening of the mother and a corresponding specific modification in the fetus becomes evident. For there are no nerves in the umbilical cord, the only path of communication between mother and fetus being the indirect one by way of the blood stream. Even this method of communication is limited inasmuch as the mother's blood does not circulate through the blood vessels of the fetus. Gaseous and dissolved substances are merely interchanged through the thin walls of the capillary blood vessels in the placenta.