In the family, likewise, likenesses and stature pass from generation to generation. So, also, of size. Fowler found this exemplified everywhere. Some of his illustrations were taken from the Websters, Franklins, and Folgers. Muscular strength is hereditary, as with the Douglas, Fessenden, and Garrish families. Physical deformities and excrescences obey this edict of nature; and it includes disease, insanity, gray hair, premature death, propensities, length of life and beauty. The truth is overwhelming that mental faculties and qualities descend from child to child. These sequences in mental phenomena operate through generations upon caution, self-esteem, firmness, pride, benevolence, and religious feeling. Talent and ability go by descent. Even genius, although akin to divine, is transmissible. “Each generation,” said Galton, “has enormous power over the natural gifts of those that follow.... The results of an examination into the kindred of about 400 illustrious men of all periods of history were such, in my own opinion, as completely to establish the theory that genius was hereditary.” Now for my application. Gambling, in some form, is a propensity of the general mind: an inclination now hereditary in the race. That such must be the case is clear from Ribot, Maudsley and Da Gama Machado. “The dead rule over the living,” writes Spencer. “Past generations exercise power over present generations, by transmitting their nature, bodily and mental.” The origin and development of gambling were obvious to the eminent astronomer, Richard A. Proctor. “Beyond doubt,” he said, “the element of chance which enters into all lives, has had a most potent influence in moulding the characters of men. If we consider the multitudinous fancies and superstitions of men like sailors, farmers, and hunters, whose lives depend more on chance than those of men in some other employments, and recognize this as the natural effect of the influence which chance has on their fortunes, we need not consider it strange if the influence of chance, in moulding the minds and characters of our ancestors during countless generations, should have produced a very marked effect on human nature. An immense number of those from whom I inherit descent must, in the old savage days, have depended almost wholly upon chance for the very means of subsistence. When, wild in wood, the savage ran, he ran on speculation. He might, or he might not, be lucky enough to earn his living on any day, by a successful chase, or by finding such fruits of the earth as would supply him with a satisfactory amount of food. He might have much depending on chances which he could not avoid risking, as the gambler of to-day has when he ‘sees red’ and stakes his whole fortune on a throw of the dice or a turn of the cards. We cannot be doubtful about the effects of such chance influences even on the individual character. Repeated, generation after generation, they must have tended to fill men with