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Hereditary Genius
335
sure to be passed on from step to step, until they have reached the
highest level of which they are capable. The first honour of the year
in a population of some 400 millions—the senior classic and senior
wrangler rolled into one—is the “Chuan-Yuan.” Are the Chuan-
Yuans ever related together? is a question I have asked, and to which
a reply was promised me by a friend of high distinction in China, but
which has not reached me up to the time I am writing these lines.
However, I put a question on the subject into the pages of the Hong-
Kong Notes and Queries (Aug. 1868), and found at all events one
case, of a woman who, after bearing a child who afterwards became
a Chuan-Yuan, was divorced from her husband, but marrying again,
she bore a second child, who also became a Chuan-Yuan, to her next
husband. I feel the utmost confidence that if the question were
thoroughly gone into by a really competent person, China would
afford a perfect treasury of facts bearing on heredity. There is,
however, a considerable difficulty in making these inquiries, arising
from the paucity of surnames in China, and also from the necessity of
going back to periods (and there are many such) when corruption
was far less rife in China than it is at present.
The records of the Olympian Games in the palmy days of Greece,
which were scrupulously kept by the Eleans, would have been an
excellent mine to dig into, for facts bearing on heredity; but they are
not now to be had. However, I find one incidental circumstance in
their history that is worth a few lines of notice. It appears, there was
a single instance of a married woman having ventured to be present,
while the games were going on, although death was the penalty of the
attempt. She was found out, but excused, because her father,
brothers, and son had all been victors.
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