Trabut: 
turally it is decidedly fruitful, yielding 
an abundance of well-formed, seedless 
fruits. 
This first attempt to hybridize the 
quince and the pear should encourage 
To Prevent Waste of 
With a view to finding and conserving 
especially valuable variations in the 
human race, the Civic Club of Alle- 
gheny County (PennsylVania), has es- 
tablished a Committee on Exceptionally 
Able Youths. Blanks are being sent to 
the school principals of Pittsburgh, with 
the following letter: 
“The Committee on Exceptionally 
Able Youths of the Civic Club of Alle- 
gheny County is conducting psycho- 
logical tests to find the most exception- 
ally gifted youths in Pittsburgh and 
vicinity who have dropped out of school 
prematurely or will do so before they 
have had the training appropriate to 
their abilities. Our work is limited to 
the very few individuals who have im- 
pressed the teacher or principal as 
having extraordinary ability, when this 
ability, without assistance, is not likely 
to receive proper development. Some- 
times the families could afford further 
Pyronia 419 
plant breeders to make new attempts 
to combine the quince with those 
primitive species of Pyrus which have 
given us splendid and highly esteemed 
varieties of pears in such great numbers. 
Potential Ability 
schooling and would provide it if they 
had tangible evidence from us of the 
very high qualities of the son or daugh- 
ter. In other cases, a scholarship is 
necessary, and our recommendation 
will suffice to secure a number of these. 
“Will you, therefore, select one or 
two individuals as described, who are 
in the eighth grade or high school or 
who have left school in the past few 
years, and send us their names and 
data as called for in the accompanying 
blank. We will then make an appoint- 
ment when these individuals and others 
will be tested by a series of mental 
measurements.” . 
The chairman of the committee, 
Professor Roswell H. Johnson of the 
University of Pittsburgh, is a eugeni- 
cist; the other members, Professors 
We V.. Bingham, “).)B- Miner,.G..C: 
Basset and F. A. C. Perrin, are psy- 
chologists. 
A Study of Rural Epilepsy 
NINE FAMILY HISTORIES OF EPI- 
LEPTICS IN ONE RURAL COUNTY. 
State of New York, State Board of Charities, 
Bureau of Analysis and _ Investigation. 
Eugenics and Social Welfare Bulletin, No. 7. 
Albany, N. Y., 1916. 
The Department of State and Alien 
Poor in New York is taking an unusually 
intelligent view of its work, in the 
publication of the series of pamphlets 
above noted. One of its functions being 
established by law as the investigation 
of “‘the condition of the poor seeking 
aid,” it is going to the bottom of the 
problem. The present bulletin is de- 
voted mainly to a general review of the 
nature of epilepsy, in which it appears 
that heredity is held directly responsible 
for something like one-half of the cases. 
It has been estimated that there are in 
the United States perhaps as many as 
175,000 epileptics—a population equal 
to that of the State of Wyoming. New 
York has a large colony for them (the 
Craig Colony) in Livingston County, 
and the families of nine inmates from 
a neighboring county were traced by 
Miss Florence Givens Smith, the results 
being presented in this bulletin. She 
has contented herself with publishing 
the facts, wisely refraining from any 
attempt to deduce laws of heredity. 
