244 BESSIE NOYES 



earlier and the later periods of the work. Such an increase 

 may have been due to the greater degree of adjustment to the 

 environment in the individuals constituting the race after 

 cultivation for six months in malted milk. 



THE EFFECT OF ALCOHOL IN RELATION TO INHERITANCE 



Can the inherited characteristics of organisms be changed by 

 environmental agents? Particularly, is it possible by poisons, 

 by extremes of temperature, or by excessive concentration of 

 salts in themselves non-toxic, so to injure germ cells that later 

 generations will be weak, abnormal, or essentially different 

 from their parents? 



This phase of the general problem of the causes of variation 

 in organisms has been attacked more extensively in mammals and 

 birds than in any other members of the animal kingdom. The 

 very interesting and important sociological significance of a 

 limited part of the problem, namely, the effect of alcohol on 

 human welfare, has resulted in the bringing together of a large 

 mass of data, unscientifically collected and arranged for the 

 most part, pointing in a general direction too familiar to require 

 setting forth here. The larger mass of the experimental data 

 on the same subject has been collected during the last few. years 

 on guinea-pigs and the domestic fowl. Stockard ('18), working 

 with guinea-pigs, has studied for over seven years the behavior 

 of these animals when subjected to the influence of alcohol. Not 

 only has the effect of alcohol on the individual animal been 

 studied, but also the effect of alcohol on the progeny when matings 

 were made between alcoholized animals, between alcoholized 

 animals and normal animals, and between the progeny of alco- 

 holized animals and normal animals as far as the third genera- 

 tion. In regard to the effect of the alcohol on the individual 

 animal the earlier work is summed up as showing ' ' that the germ 

 cells in either the male or the female mammal may be changed or 

 affected by a chemical treatment administered to the body of the 

 animal" (L 120). The progeny of animals thus treated ''showed 

 more or less marked deviation from the normal in many definitely 

 measurable qualities, such as their mortality records, structural 



