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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and tolerably useful under restraint, 

 but who would otherwise doubtless con- 

 tinue the family traits of her ancestry. 

 These are shown on the charts here 

 reproduced. The symbols may seem at 

 first sight to be somewhat complicated, 

 but it is worth while to become acquaint- 

 ed with this kind of terminology. Males 

 are indicated by squares; females by 

 circles. Black rquares and circles with 

 a white " F " mean feeble-minded per- 

 sons; N means normal. When there is 

 no letter the condition is not known. 

 We see on chart II. that Deborah is the 

 illegitimate daughter of a feeble-minded 

 mother, whose father and mother were 

 both feeble-minded and whose sister and 

 two brothers surviving infancy were also 

 feeble-minded. This is in accordance 

 with Mendelian expectation. Deborah 

 had an even chance of being normal ; 

 her mother had probably none. In this 

 whole family 41 matings have occurred 

 in which both parents were feeble-mind- 

 ed; they had 222 feeble-minded chil- 

 dren with only two who were considered 

 normal. Justin, the feeble-minded and 

 criminal grandfather of Deborah, was 

 one of fifteen children of feeble-minded 

 parents, all but one of whom are said 

 to have been feeble-minded. The 

 father, Millard, was the oldest son 

 shown on chart I., the family consist- 

 ing of five children known to be feeble- 

 minded and two normal children. The 

 parents of this family consisted of a 

 feeble-minded father and a normal 

 mother. The father was the illegitimate 

 son of a feeble-minded mother and of a 

 man of good New Jersey family to 

 whom the name Martin Kallikak is as- 

 signed. 



This Martin Kallikak afterwards mar- 

 ried and had the additional children 

 shown on chart I. They have had some 

 500 descendants, all normal, all but three 



good representative citizens, many of 

 them leaders in the professions and in 

 their communities. The almost equal 

 number of descendants through the ille- 

 gitimate and feeble-minded son supplied 

 143 persons known to be feeble-minded 

 and only 46 found to be normal. 

 Among them were 36 illegitimate chil- 

 dren, 33 sexually immoral and 24 con- 

 firmed drunkards. 



A comparison of the two lines of des- 

 cent from Martin Kallikak certainly ex- 

 hibits a dramatic contrast, but it is 

 scarcely the natural experiment in true 

 heredity which Dr. Goddard claims it to 

 be. If, on the one hand, Martin Kalli- 

 kak had left neglected illegitimate chil- 

 dren, without taint of feeble-minded- 

 ness, it is not likely that they would 

 have established prosperous lines of 

 descent. On the contrary, they would 

 probably have intermarried with the 

 degenerate and feeble-minded. If, on 

 the other hand, the feeble-minded son 

 had been legitimate, he would have been 

 properly cared for, and in all probabil- 

 ity would have left no such descendants 

 as came from the illegitimate and ne- 

 glected child. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 



We record with regret the death of 

 Dr. John Shaw Billings, director of the 

 New York Public Library, previously 

 surgeon and lieutenant colonel in the 

 army; of Dr. Philip Hanson Hiss, pro- 

 fessor of bacteriology in Columbia Uni- 

 versity; of Mr. John Fritz, the iron- 

 master of Bethlehem, Pa.; of Dr. Sam- 

 uel Allen Lattimore, emeritus professor 

 of chemistry at the University of Ro- 

 chester; of Sir William White, F.R.S., 

 the distinguished British naval archi- 

 tect, and of Dr. G. de Laval, the well- 

 known Swedish engineer and inventor. 



