NEW LIGHT ON HEREDITY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19219, 9 July 1924, Page 4

NEW LIGHT ON HEREDITY.

TRANSMISSION OP ACQUIRED CHARACTERS. Sir Charles Crichton-Browne, in taking the chair at the educational congress on the Monkseori metliod at the Imperial Exhibition at Wembley, announced that a new era seemed to be dawning, and pointed out that recent experiments had demonstrated that acquired characters might be transmitted, and that the Monkeson training of the senses might prove helpful to the children of the children on whom it was bestowed. “Pavlov '' lie said, “that great Russian physiologist, who has braved the brutal Bolahevista in their demands and fcarlefisly denounced their infamous system which w producing in every town of Russ.a hordes of vagrant, homeless, criminal, and discaocd children, has shown that by functional exercise certain changes may be stamped on the nervous system and become hereditary. He trained a group of while mice to run to their feeding place on the waging of an electric bell, and found that 300 lessons were required in the first instance to accustom the mice to run to Ihc feed ‘"! spot when they heard the bol ring. But in mice bred from tuft mice thus trained a much higher aptitude was displayed, for only a hundred lessons were necessary to obtain the same, result. The third generation required only 30 lessons, and the fourth only ten. The last, generation on which Pavlov has reported learned their lesson after only five repetitions, and he Jim nopis that the sixth generation, nr one a.ill later, will ;.'. n i 0 t ,he feeding place on the first occasion hearing the Cell. • Very significant and hopeful am these exneriments in relation to the influence of (rain in- education, discipline in moulding ard modifying the higher nerve centres Vrv encouraging should they be to Ur Montesson f fits o morc far-reaching than they had hitherto believed, and are benefiting the race as well the individual child.” Discussing the Monfccasori system more generally t Sir James Cnchton-Browno remarked that Or Monte-sson m the Casa dm Bambin' had exercised the same patience and faith that England nad done in her cWlin-s with her oilspring beyond the sea. The Mon lessor! method emanated from Rome and had spread round 1 Eft world, and had doubtless become acclimatised m Canada, Australia, the Cane, New Zealand, and India. Dr Monk-scon, (lie founder of the method and the onto woman who could a a yet, as an educational leader, rank with Rouoseau, Herbert Pestalozzi. and Eroebel, was animated by a tender and voluminous love of children ami possessed that personal magnetism which is so potent a force in education.