The "points" of an animal have for ages been the subject of the breeders' successful efforts, but they are not more certainly inherited than are the form of a man's head, his stature, the colour of his eyes, and the length of his life, all of which are hereditary like the colour of a horse, the scent of a flower and the shape of an apple. Naturalists no more than farmers can with exactness predict that 173 live lambs will be born on one farm, that every flower of the same class will give equally abundant perfume, or that every fruit on the same tree will weigh just the same to an ounce. We are still more ignorant or at least equally ignorant about the exact results in a particular instance of the character of the individual offspring even when we are reasonably well acquainted with all its antecedents. We can say with certainty, however, as Dr. Karl Pearson says that "of all the children of a definite class of parents like A and B we can assert that a definite proportion will have a definite amount of any character of A and B, with a certainty as great as that of any scientific prediction whatever. I am not speaking from belief or from theory but simply from facts, from thousands of instances recorded by my fellow-workers or myself. Here is a great principle of life, something apparently controlling all life from its simplest to its most complex forms, and yet, though we too often see its relentless effects we go on hoping that at any rate we and our offspring shall be the exceptions to its rules. For one of us as an individual this may be true, but for the _average_ of us all, for the nation as a whole, it is an idle hope. You cannot change the leopard's spots, and you cannot change bad stock to good; you may dilute it, but until it ceases to multiply, it will not cease to be." (National Life from the Standpoint of Science.) The reformer sees in these facts the basis of his highest hopes as certainly as he sees therein the condemnation of all attempts at reform which ignore these bed-rock truths. Permanent maintenance of good standards, gradual elimination of the hopelessly bad stock, and experimentation designed to utilise all the good elements on the border line between the desirable and the undesired--this is the Eugenist's programme in the immediate present. His ideal goes beyond this practicable programme, for the Eugenist aims at some final justification of Nature. Without worshipping Nature he desires to understand her processes and walk in harmony with her tendencies.