Yet all the wisest mothers whom I know vary only in the degree of their belief in this power of the mother. All are agreed in believing that the spiritual and mental condition and environment of the mother does profoundly affect the character and spiritual powers of the child. Alfred Russel Wallace, the great naturalist and co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of Evolution, was in many respects a pioneer of unusual foresight and penetrating observation, who thought that the transmission of mental influence from the mother to the child was neither impossible nor even very improbable. In 1893 he published a long letter detailing cases, which he prefaced by saying:-- The popular belief that prenatal influences on the mother affect the offspring physically, producing moles and other birth-marks, and even malformations of a more or less serious character, is said to be entirely unsupported by any trustworthy facts, and it is also rejected by physiologists on theoretical grounds. But I am not aware that the question of purely mental effects arising from prenatal mental influences on the mother has been separately studied. Our ignorance of the causes, or at least of the whole series of causes, that determine individual character is so great, that such transmission of mental influences will hardly be held to be impossible or even very improbable. It is one of those questions on which our minds should remain open, and on which we should be ready to receive and discuss whatever evidence is available; and should a _primâ facie_ case be made out, seek for confirmation by some form of experiment or observation, which is perhaps less difficult than at first sight it may appear to be. In one of the works of George or Andrew Combe, I remember a reference to a case in which the character of a child appeared to have been modified by the prenatal reading of its mother, and the author, if I mistake not, accepted the result as probable, if not demonstrated. I think, therefore, that it will be advisable to make public some interesting cases of such modification of character which have been sent me by an Australian lady in consequence of reading my recent articles on the question whether acquired characters are inherited. The value of these cases depends on their differential character. Two mothers state that in each of their children (three in one case and four in the other) the character of the child very distinctly indicated the prenatal occupations and mental interests of the mother, though at the time they were manifested in the child they had ceased to occupy the parent, so that the result cannot be explained by imitation. The second mother referred to by my correspondent only gives cases observed in other families which do not go beyond ordinary heredity.