42 HEREDITY AND SOCIAL FITNESS 



they reached the camp it was shot by their friends. While it is true 

 that he has great endurance, it is also probably true that he has not 

 sense enough to be afraid of anything. 



The sole surviving child (V-205) of this couple, product of two germ- 

 plasms lacking practically all socially effective traits, was born 1894. 

 She is a low-grade imbecile patient at the Institution for the Care of 

 the Feeble-Minded, Polk, Pennsylvania. She was taken by her aunt 

 (IV-98) and after her death was bound out by her uncle to some 

 people, who, according to the story of her father, neglected and half 

 starved her. When about 12 years old she was brought back to S by 

 her aunt, and kept for short periods by various relatives on her father's 

 side. She spent most of the time with her paternal aunt, who is in fair 

 circumstances, but who found the child too great a care. She could not 

 dress herself or eat properly, and was on the lap of every stranger who 

 entered the house. She had also sHght epileptic attacks. This aunt 

 was instrumental in having her taken to the county farm, whence she 

 was later transferred, November 1904, to the Institution. She is 

 good-natured, active, well-nourished, inclined to gluttony; sight and 

 hearing good and without noticeable speech defect. She has never 

 learned to read or to count to more than 5; does only the coarsest work, 

 such as scrubbing and paring potatoes; is very talkative and light- 

 hearted, and gives a stranger the impression of being of better mental- 

 ity than she is. Her conversation is confined to immediate objects, 

 since she remembers scarcely anything of her life prior to going to the 

 Polk school. She has had no epileptic attacks during the last five years. 



Returning now' to the sixth child of III-35 and 36, we take up IV- 

 102, born 1866, familiarly known as "Doc." He has no marked defect 

 in sense of number or quantity, but was too lazy to learn anything at 

 school; has grown to be a fat, stupid, sluggish man; round face, and 

 rather coarse features. Has never married. He lives with his mother 

 in the dirty, disordered log house already described. They have sold 

 off portions of the 70 acres bit by bit, until only 20 acres are left, and 

 these are uncultivated. He occasionally puts in a crop, and then is 

 too lazy to work it. When too sharply pressed by want he goes to his 

 neighbors and gets them to advance a dollar on work promised; then 

 he fails to do the work. During the past winter he and his mother had 

 been recipients of county aid. He is said to have immoral relations 

 with his cousin's wife, and has also taken various women of bad repute 

 to live with him. When threatened by the community with being 

 tarred and feathered for this offense, he turns the woman out. He is very 

 easily moved to laughter and will sit for hours smoking and chuckling 

 over some supposed joke. He is thus lazy, stupid, dishonest, untruth- 

 ful, with the libidinous instinct of his mother. 



