There is, of course, a striking instance related in the Old Testament, which seems to make it very clear that a belief in maternal impressions existed from the very earliest times among the Israelites. The story of Jacob is well known: "Jacob took him rods of green poplar and of the hazel and chestnut tree and pilled white streaks in them and made the white appear which was in the rods, and he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, and the flocks conceived before the rods and brought forth cattle, ring-streaked, speckled and spotted." In this case it seems evident that Jacob was not looking for a miracle, but was expecting that a law of nature would be fulfilled in the matter, the influence of the unusual sight upon the animal mothers proving sufficient to have a definite effect upon their unborn offspring. The most ardent advocates of the power of maternal impressions would scarcely concede the existence of as much influence as this of the mother's mind over the child unborn, otherwise there would surely be a very absurd collection of anomalous births in the race. On the other hand, it is generally conceded that the mother's habitual temper of mind and the thoughts with which she occupies herself may influence her unborn offspring to a most marked degree. The story is told of a child-murderer who delighted in fiendish deeds of cruelty and had murdered many people in cold blood, that his mother, the wife of a butcher, had delighted in watching the operation of slaughtering during the course of her pregnancy. There are any number of women, however, who have, by the necessities {62} of their occupation, had to witness the shedding of animal blood under such circumstances and yet without any special effect being noticeable in their offspring. It has been said that the opposite is also true, and that if a woman occupies herself with high and lofty thoughts, with noble deeds and unselfish devotion to others and if she occupies her mind and senses with the great works of art, a correspondingly beneficial effect will be noted upon the character of the foetus. These are, however, abstruse speculations leading to conclusions not founded upon actual observation, but upon theorising over the supposed fitness of things.