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cllAr. Ix.]   THE ARTISTIC FACULTY.   ].55

The object of the present chapter is not to give a reply to the simple question, whether or no the Artistic faculty tends to be inherited. A man must be very crotchety or very ignorant, who nowadays seriously doubts the inheritance either of this or of any other faculty. The question is whether or no its inheritance follows a similar law to that which has been shown to govern Stature and Eye-colour, and which has been worked out with some completeness in the foregoing chapters. Before answering this question, it will be convenient to compare the distribution of the Artistic faculty in the two sexes, and to learn the influence it may exercise on marriage selection.

I began by dividing my data into four classes of aptitudes ; the first was for music alone ; the second for drawing alone ; the third for both music and drawing ; and the fourth includes all those about whose artistic capacities a discreet silence was observed. After prefatory trials, I found it so difficult to separate aptitude for music from aptitude for drawing, that I determined to throw the three first classes into the single group of Artistic. This and the group of the NonArtistic are the only two divisions now to be considered.

A difficulty presented itself at the outset in respect to the families that included boys, girls, and young children, whose artistic tastes and capacities can seldom be fairly judged, while they are liable to be appraised too favourably by the compiler of the Family records, especially if he or she was one of their parents. As the practice of picking and choosing is very hazardous in