equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a
brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no
means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which,
especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences
that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable
races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily
over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word
_eugenics_ would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a
neater word and a more generalised one than _viriculture_, which I
once ventured to use.]

Energy is an attribute of the higher races, being favoured beyond
all other qualities by natural selection. We are goaded into
activity by the conditions and struggles of life. They afford
stimuli that oppress and worry the weakly, who complain and bewail,
and it may be succumb to them, but which the energetic man welcomes
with a good-humoured shrug, and is the better for in the end.

The stimuli may be of any description: the only important matter is
that all the faculties should be kept working to prevent their
perishing by disuse. If the faculties are few, very simple stimuli
will suffice. Even that of fleas will go a long way. A dog is
continually scratching himself, and a bird pluming itself, whenever
they are not occupied with food, hunting, fighting, or love. In
those blank times there is very little for them to attend to besides
their varied cutaneous irritations. It is a matter of observation
that well washed and combed domestic pets grow dull; they miss the
stimulus of fleas. If animals did not prosper through the agency of
their insect plagues, it seems probable that their races would long
since have been so modified that their bodies should have ceased to