The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1923-12-29
Wide
World
By Herbert Kaufman

FELS usually mature in rivers,
- but spawn in the lower depths
OF the sea. AS the fateful sea
son approaches, they begin to
undergo an anticipatory trans
formation. The body prepares
Itself for the enormous pressure
which none but abyssmal fish
can survive.
DR.. tombstone, Liverpool
3cthyologist, observes that bub-
Dies form beneath the skin of
cells raised in aquariums as they
lnstlnctively adjust themselves
TO Withstand the waters to which
ancestral urges send them.
We're all more or less blindly
moved by heredity. Impulsive
dislikes and distrusts, wander
lusts. even genius and fears, are
dim instructions out Of primordi-
al ages.
Snake-phobia is a cry flashed
from jungle forebears who lived
IN constant horror of primitive
reptiles.
The warning may be borne in
the arteries of a dozen genera
tons before it is delivered to
receptive brain cell.
Dread of the dark began in
cave dwellings without protec-
ton against aboriginal carnivora.
The Blind Lottery of Birth
THE fragments of plasm that
\ carry these messages be-
tween ancestors and descendants
are erratic ENJOYS. This ac-
counts for the strange variations
IN family temperaments.
No mother realizes what COM
binations of characteristics are
lurking in her veins, or when
wandering corpuscle, which
holds the precious essence of a
tribal chieftain, or one poisoned
with the fanatical virus of a
pagan hysteriac, shall be trans
mitted to a son or daughter.
We don't cling to type quite
so inexorably as cells and earth
worms and marsupials conform
to precedent; but, no human can
sense what primal taints and
talents Turk in his strain.
Psychologists are never as
tonished to behold a Lincoln
spring from the mires; nor are
they shocked at the revolving
crimes and constituencies bar
barities suddenly committed By
mild and rften exquisitely
nurtured folk.
Perhaps a Pagan Summons
CCIENCE regularly expects
- such ,shivering tragedies as
the Vauss case. An apparently
happy and balanced woman
wraps a three-month infant IN
blankets; saturates them Withs
kerosene, locks a fifteen-months'-
old boy and his elder sister in
n closet and, before her husband
can reac.I the burning room, two
of the babies are dead.
She doesn't remember a thing
about it. Time, though, scanning
memory, might shift the sands
from above a Carthaginian
temple, and disclose mad-eyed
xealot sacrificing her first-born
on the flaming affairs of he'll
ish deity.
Now, thousands of years after,
nerhaus. the same implacable
summons comes again and Is
dutifully answered by a micro
Scopic servant, which has mean
while traversed hundred bodies
in search of an obedient sub
consciousness.
We haven't read the first
chapters of knowledge.
Some Queer Birds
nR. OSCAR RIDDLE, Car
IL negie experimenter, for in
stance, tells of a female dove
changed to a male through tu-
bercular infection.
This bird, after laying eggs
and manifesting all the stig-
mata of original sex, develops
the craw, aspect, weight and
COO OF a male bird.
There are five hundred thou
sand distinct forms of marine
creatures and ten million five
hundred thousand square miles
of Antarctic ocean bottom, COM
posed, to unmeasured thick
ness, of their calcined and
siIicous remains. Biology is
still a closed book.
Prof. Weatherly, of Indiana
University, thinks that we've
grown too precocious, and
voices the opinion of many
Etudentg when he doubts that
present stores of information
are a blessing to the race.
However, despite Sir Ray
I-ankester's yearning for
Spast, interrupted by civiliza-
ton" most of US are willing to
take our chance with The