454 



The Journal of Heredity 



easily performed after a little practice. 

 But one breeder has found this unneces- 

 sary and claims that with proper care 

 no trouble need be met with from the 

 scent. He finds that when skunks are 

 raised in captivity and treated with 

 kindness they no longer throw their 

 scent. To prove the point, he is now 

 raising skunks an naitirel, and is shown 

 in Fig. 5 handling them withovit the 

 least apjjarent danger. 



Skunks seem to enjoy living near man 

 and often build their nests under flooring 

 which is near the groimd. They like to 

 bathe frequently, but will not swim un- 

 less forced into deep water. Some of 

 the smaller varieties climb trees. The 

 skunk frequently inhabits some hole 

 in the ground, either digging it with his 

 strong plantigrade feet, or more fre- 



quently selecting a hole which has 

 already been dug, and from which he 

 may find it his duty to oust the erstwhile 

 occupant. 



Skunks breed but once a year, gener- 

 ally in the early spring, and have from 

 six to twelve in a litter sometime in 

 May. The new-born skunks do not 

 open their eyes for some weeks, and 

 are at first hairless in most cases. 

 They follow their mother for six months, 

 at the end of which time they are adult, 

 and breed in their turn the follo\ving 

 spring. Although many are still caught 

 by trapping, the number thus obtained 

 would not begin to fill the demand for 

 pelts, so breeding is becoming more and 

 more a profitable industry. Breeders 

 expect that prices for pelts will more 

 than double in the next few vears. 



Iowa Establishes Child Welfare Research Station 



The State of Iowa is to have the 

 credit of establishing the first Child 

 Welfare Research Station. The recent 

 act of the legislature authorizing the 

 appropriation of 825,000 a year for this 

 purpose inaugurates an attempt to do 

 for human life what animal husbandry 

 experiment stations have long done for 

 the conservation of animal life. The 

 work of the station includes six divisions, 

 as follows: (1) Heredity and prenatal 

 care, focussing the resources of the 

 rapidly growing science of genetics 

 upon the problems of parenthood in 

 Iowa; (2) Nutrition of the child, investi- 

 gating and combating the causes of 

 infant mortality in the State; (3) 

 Preventive medicine, including the study 

 of infant diseases, preventive dentistry, 



hygiene of the nervous system, and the 

 establishment of standards of normal 

 development for Iowa conditions; (4) 

 Social surveys, giving a basis for 

 legislation on birth registration, sanitary 

 codes, industrial regulation and school 

 attendance; (5) Education and morals, 

 with especial attention to the types of 

 education that may be utilized by 

 parents before the children are six years 

 old; (6) Applied psychology, involving 

 studies in mental health and growth. 

 There is undoubtedly a splendid field 

 for research in each one of these divi- 

 sions, and the State of Iowa is to be 

 congratulated on engaging in such a 

 beneficent and far-reaching enterprise. 

 — Journ. Educational Psychology. 



Underfeeding as a Cause of Sterility 



One of the most imjjortant investiga- 

 tions required in connection with eu- 

 genics is of the causes leading to 

 sterility. It is generally believed that 

 overfeeding will produce at least tem- 

 porary sterility in female animals, and 

 in the Biolos^ical Bulletin (August, 1917), 

 Leo Loeb publishes experiments with 

 guinea-pigs which show that underfeed- 



ing will also lead to the sterility of the 

 female. The possibility that the same 

 cause acting in man might produce 

 the same effect adds interest to the 

 recent announcement from Berlin, 

 that newly-married couples are to be 

 given a double allotment of food 

 during the first six weeks of their mar- 

 ried life. 



