The Editor: Genealogy and Eugenics 383 



to take a pride in feeling that the history few, will be felt by all, as a positive, 



of his family is a contribution to human dynamic force helping them to lead more 



knowledge, as well as to the pride of the worthy lives in the short span allotted 



family. to them, and helping them to leave more 



If the individual genealogist does worthy posterity to carry on the names 



this, the science of genealogy will they bore and the sacred thread of 



become a splendid servant of the whole immortality, of which they were for a 



race, and its influence, not confined to a time the custodians. ^^ 



15 Since the above was written, the Eugenics Record Office has pubUshed Bulletin No. 13 on 

 "How to Make a Eugenical Family Study." It gives details of procedure which will be of much 

 help to any one interested in eugenic genealogy. 



Big Tree Photograph Contest 



Because of the large number of entries received at the close of the Big Tree 

 photograph contest (more than 200 arriving during the final ten days of the offer) , 

 the Association officials were unable to make an annotmcement of the result, in 

 time for this issue. The full results will be printed in the September issue. 



Stammering and Heredity 



Stammering is largely due to heredity, according to Dr. G. Hudson Makuen, 

 who presents a study of 1,000 cases in the Volta Review (July, 1915). 



"Thirty-nine per cent, of my patients," he says, "admitted having or having had 

 relatives who stammered, and this percentage is probably too low, because there is 

 always a tendency to conceal the facts in matters of this sort, and because stammer- 

 ing probably existed in some of the families without the knowledge of the patients. 



"Stammering is an affection that develops with the development of the speech 

 of the individual, and it develops chiefly in those children who have inherited, or 

 it may be acquired, the physical anomalies which make the development of the 

 affection possible or even probable. These anomalous cerebral conditions which 

 give rise to stammering may be transmitted from parents who themselves may not 

 have stammered, but who possessed all the cortical conditions which usually result 

 in the affection and only escaped it through more favorable environmental surround- 

 ings." 



Inheritability of Cancer in Mice 



Cancer in mice is due to the inheritance of a tendency or "diathesis" which 

 behaves as a Mendelian recessive, according to Maud Slye (Journal of Medical 

 Research, XXXII, 1, March, 1915). "Among over 9,000 autopsies, yielding more 

 than 500 cases of spontaneous cancer in this laboratory (Otto S. A. Sprague Memo- 

 rial Institute, University of Chicago), the cancers almost without exception have 

 occurred in strains of known cancerous ancestry." Some evidence is offered 

 that this regular appearance of the disease in certain strains, and not in others, 

 cannot be due to infection. It is stated that mouse cancer is not distinguishable 

 from human cancer. The author concludes, "Cancer is not transmitted as such, 

 but rather as a tendency to occur from a given provocation, probably in 

 the form of over-irritation. The elimination as far as possible of all forms of 

 over-irritation to the tissues of an individual of high cancer ancestry should go 

 far to eliminate the provocation of cancer; and the eugenic control of matings so 

 that cancer shall at least not be potential in both sides of the hybrid cross ought 

 to eventuate in a considerable decrease in the frequency of human cancer." 



