Religion and 
great commandment given to man by 
our Heavenly Father. It is indeed, a 
case of the survival of the fittest, and 
it is only a matter of time before those 
who so strongly advocate and practice 
this pernicious doctrine of ‘birth con- 
trol’ and the limiting of the number of 
children in the family, will have legis- 
lated themselves and their kind out of 
this mortal existence.” 
It is proper to point. out that birth 
control is not, as the public seems to 
suppose, an integral part of the eugenics 
propaganda. Many eugenicists advo- 
cate it; many others oppose it. In 
either case, it must be regarded as a 
fact with which eugenics must deal. 
If one section of a community limits the 
number of births, and another section 
does not, it is easy to calculate how 
soon the latter section will supplant 
the former, and there are plenty of 
object lessons such as Mr. Smith cites, in 
the old colonial stock of New England 
A RELATIVE MATTER 
The eugenicist, of. course, is more 
interested in the quality than in the 
quantity of the population. The quan- 
tity is important only in a relative way. 
In opposition to Mr. Smith and other 
people without adequate knowledge of 
Some New 
Most of the water-liliss commonly 
grown in gardens are chance hybrids. 
The Missouri Botanical Garden has 
started systematic breeding work with 
them, on the one hand to purify some 
of the strains and on the other hand 
to produce more desirable hybrid com- 
binations. One Nymphaea has already 
been produced by four generations of 
Birth Control 
451 
biology, the eugenicist holds that there 
is a difference in the inherent quality 
of various sections of the population, 
and that if an inferior section multiplies 
much more rapidly than a superior 
section, the result will be very serious 
from the standpoint of national effi- 
ciency and racial progress. 
Precisely such a result has taken place 
in the United States during the past 
half-century. 
It is unquestionable that the number 
of births has been much limited in the 
economically most efficient sections of 
the population of the United States, 
and very little limited in the least 
efficient sections. 
It is also unquestionable that the 
spread of the birth control propaganda 
in the “lower classes’ is at the present 
time very rapid. Whether or not one 
approves of that spread, it is certain 
that the birth-rate in those classes is 
likely to fall, thus checking the very 
serious differential nature of the present 
birth-rate. . 
If, at the same time, eugenics can 
succeed to some extent 1n increasing the 
birth rate among the socially most 
valuable sections of the community, 
then the present demonstrable deteriora- 
tion of the American stock, as a whole, 
will gradually become less menacing. 
Water-Lilies 
inbreeding which bears only pink 
flowers, the blue having been eliminated 
altogether. A hybrid of a _ might- 
blooming and day-blooming species has 
been secured which has the advantage 
of remaining open longer than ordinary 
day-flowering species. It is stated that 
water-lilies are easily crossed, and many 
amateurs might work with them. 
Yak Increasing in Canada 
In 1909 the Duke of Bedford gave 
six yaks to the Canadian government. 
They are now at Banff, Alberta, and 
have increased to fourteen. The Cana- 
dians hope to make them useful as the 
fcundation of a breed of hardy cattle 
for the north, just as the American 
Government is planning in Alaska. 
The latter experiment was described 
in the JOURNAL OF HeReEpITY for 
January, 1916 (Vol. VII, p. 48), where 
an illustration was published. 
