On the other hand, ordinary
twins, who start dissimilar, ought to become more alike when brought up
in the same family, on the same diet, among the same friends, with the
same education. If the course of years shows that identical twins remain
as like as ever and ordinary twins as unlike as ever, regardless of
changes in conditions, then environment will have failed to demonstrate
that it has any great power to modify one's inborn nature in these
traits.
With this view, Galton collected the history of eighty pairs of
identical twins, thirty-five cases being accompanied by very full
details, which showed that the twins were really as nearly identical, in
childhood, as one could expect to find. On this point, Galton's
inquiries were careful, and the replies satisfactory. They are not,
however, as he remarks, much varied in character. "When the twins are
children, they are usually distinguished by ribbons tied around the
wrist or neck; nevertheless the one is sometimes fed, physicked, and
whipped by mistake for the other, and the description of these little
domestic catastrophes was usually given by the mother, in a phraseology,
that is sometimes touching by reason of its seriousness. I have one case
in which a doubt remains whether the children were not changed in their
bath, and the presumed A is not really B, and _vice versa_.
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