42 



The Journal of Heredity 



been the result of some chance meeting. 

 The good environment furnished to 

 Sam by the activities of the Children's 

 Aid Society gave these traits a chance to 

 develop. But, on the other hand, these 

 good traits might have develoi^ed in the 

 Juke en\'ironment. This has been the 

 case with some of the other Jukes. 

 In "The Jukes in 1915" (Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington, 1916), page 

 80, case 7, is the story of a family group 

 where the father, a great grandson of 

 "Margaret, the mother of criminals," 

 was mentally dull and slow at school, a 

 farm laborer, a wanderer, and had two 

 sisters who were harlots and one 

 brother criminal, while another sister 

 was chaste and reputable. This man 

 married a woman from a family much 

 higher mentally and socially than he, 

 industrious and capable, and they had 

 five children: a girl, reticent, but who 

 holds herself well; a male, who, although 

 slipshod, was regular in his work and 

 did well by his family; a female, more 

 active and forward than the first girl; 

 a male, uneducated but a steady-going 

 farm-hand, who is doing well; and a 

 female, mentally and physically active. 

 There is no evidence that this family 

 was brought up in a new and superior 

 locality. Their father wandered and 

 he took his family about with him. 

 The fine mother offered the best of 

 environment for her children, even in 

 the Juke territory, but she gave her 

 children still more — an hereditary capac- 

 ity for taking advantage of her training, 

 a natural self-control sufficient to act 



in accordance with the mores she 

 inculcated. Sam's case may have paral- 

 leled this case in that the Children's Aid 

 Society furnished the environment which 

 the fine mother did in the one men- 

 tioned ; l3ut the inheritance of good traits 

 was necessary for the end result secured. 



The case of Sam, then, does not show 

 that good environment can counteract 

 poor heredity, inasmuch as no one can 

 tell what possibilities for good or bad 

 traits Sam may have inherited because 

 no one knows the traits brought to 

 Sam by the father. 



In saying the above I do not wish to 

 discount any of the activities of the 

 Children's Aid Society or any other well- 

 meaning charitable organization for the 

 bettering of social conditions, but the 

 assumption that the environment can 

 counteract heredity cannot be proved 

 by any example of a production of 

 good traits in a changed en\4ronment 

 in any individual when the traits 

 which that individual inherits are not 

 known. 



The writer of this article has but 

 recently studied the Juke family and 

 has a record of Sam. He was an 

 illegitimate child and his paternity is 

 not known. He was born in the 

 poorhouse and was later placed in an 

 orphan's home, and then given to the 

 Children's Aid Society, when he was 

 placed in the foster home as above 

 mentioned. He disappeared in 1902, 

 when he probably ran away. He was a 

 descendant of Margaret Juke in the 

 fifth generation. 



Human "Free-Martins" 



Animal breeders know that when 

 twin calves of opposite sexes are born, 

 the female of the pair is likely to be 

 sterile and to have many male character- 

 istics. Such females are called free- 

 martins, and Lillie has recently shown 

 {Science, 1916, p. 611) that in twin 

 calves of opposite sex the foetal circula- 

 tions are usually fused so that a con- 

 stant interchange of blood takes place; 

 the action of male hormones on the 

 female is prc^bably responsible for the 



ensuing sterilit}'. The question natur- 

 ally arises whether in human twins of 

 opposite sex the female's reproductive 

 system is in any way affected, and a 

 number of correspondents of the London 

 Lancet rejxjrt that it is not. Sir 

 James Simpson made an extensive 

 study of this question and reported 

 that "the human free-martin is fertile 

 in the same jjroportion and to the same 

 degree as other women." The contrary 

 idea seems to be unfounded. 



