296 The Journal of Heredity 
pumpkin leather. Papaws may be kept 
in their natural state till midwinter or 
longer by laying them downinoats. At 
this present date, January 27, Mr. 
Thompson has them down in oats that 
are just as good as when taken from the 
tree.’’ On this last point, another cor- 
respondent writes that he has found no 
better place to store them than in the 
dry leaves at the base of the tree. 
Eugenics for Arabic-Speaking Peoples 
Hall al-’ Uqdah bi-Mulakhkhas al-IfAdah fi Intaj al-Awlad hasab al-Iradah (The Untying of the 
Knot in a Comprehensive Resumé on the Production of Children according to Will), by A. J. 
Arbeely, M.D. Pp. 193, price, $2.50. Published by the author, 1723 U Street N.W., Washington, 
DC. 
The title of this book, implying that 
it is devoted to sex-control, fails ade- 
quately to describe its nature, for the 
theory of sex-control (based on nutrition 
and the influence of the parental mind) 
occupies only a third of the book, 
although it is said to be based on 1,000 
cases. In the first two-thirds of the 
book the author, a Syrian physician 
with forty years of experience, gives a 
general treatise on eugenics, marriage 
and parenthood. It is written in a 
wholesome tone, with abundant detail, 
and gives an amount of information 
about heredity and race betterment 
which has not hitherto been available 
in the Arabic language, although the 
ancient Arabs had some sound empirical 
ideas on the subject. Muhammad is 
reported to have commanded, ‘Select 
your wives with a view to offspring,” 
and again to have said, “Avoid the 
rank plant which grows on a dung-hill.” 
When asked to explain this he replied, 
“T had in mind the woman who is 
beautiful but whose ancestry is bad.” 
Marriage and parenthood were held in 
the highest esteem, but the veneration 
of them was sometimes carried to an 
extreme, as is reflected in another say- 
ing credited to the prophet, “A fecund 
black wife is preferable to a sterile 
white one.” Dr. Arbeely does not 
attempt to discuss this phase of the 
subject, which offers an attractive 
field of research for some Orientalist. 
It should be added that the literary 
style of the author is admirable, as 
those who know his lexicographic and 
journalistic work would expect. 
Feeblemindedness and Charity 
More than half of the men who, in 
New York, apply to the Joint Applica- 
tion Bureau for Aid or patronize the 
Municipal Lodging House are morons, 
according to the estimate of Charles B. 
Barnes, Director Bureau of Employment 
of the State of New York. If careful 
examination should prove his estimate 
to be correct, he says, “it would mean 
an entire change in the attitude of the 
courts, charitable organizations, and the 
public generally toward them. We 
would no longer seek to ‘rehabilitate’ 
them. The long and weary path of 
attempting to make them self-support- 
ing would be abandoned. ‘The attempt 
to ‘reform’ them, in the sense in which 
it is now used, or the obtaining from 
them of promises to reform, would not 
be made. Other disposition would have 
to be made of them. We would com- 
mence to treat our mentally defective as 
well and with as much consideration as 
we now treat our physically defective, 
and no more stigma would be attached 
to the one than to the other.” For 
treating the feebleminded among the 
applicants for charity, he declares that 
the farm colony with forcible detention 
is the only practical plan; by this means 
most of them could be made self-sup- 
porting, while at the present time most 
of them are annually costing society 
far more than they earn. On economic 
as well as humanitarian grounds, there- 
fore, a revision of methods of distrib- 
uting charity, which would eliminate 
the feebleminded, appears to be justified. 
