102 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



considered, and substituting for such physical 

 characters as short fingers, curly hair, and stationary 

 night-blindness certain bad civic qualities such as 

 those which characterise the loafer, the wastrel, the 

 congenital drunkard, the habitual criminal, the con- 

 genitally tuberculous, the mentally deficient, the 

 thriftless and generally incapable persons, and others, 

 how will the problem work out ? When we recall 

 with what persistency the peculiarity of stationary 

 night-blindness and short-fingerness passed on 

 through the generations — passed on for two hundred 

 and seventy years in the case of the former character, 

 and in the latter case for about one hundred and 

 eighty-nine years — without any known alteration, it 

 is time that we began to consider what types of 

 citizens our philanthropy and charity are breeding. 

 It is time we faced the problem. It is time we 

 learned how Httle environment can do, and how 

 much the inborn qualities determine all for us. In the 

 multitudinous efforts which are being made for social 

 reformation it is to be hoped that the beauties of 

 character will not be forgotten, and that the road to 

 success will not be made too easy, nor the road to 

 destruction too difficult. If by our social efforts we 

 are breeding, rearing, and accumulating an un- 

 desirable stock that cannot or will not work, that 

 cannot or will not tend its children, that cannot or 

 will not be sober and thrifty, that cannot or will not 

 educate and feed itself, that cannot or will not attain 

 an intellectual and moral level that is necessary for 

 social life, then we are advancing along the road that 



