52 SOME RECENT MISINTERPRETATIONS OF THE 



and Direct Parental Environment, only the correlation coefficients in 

 the last case rise to any significance. The Physical Environment is 

 of small importance compared to the Parental Environment, and we 

 are really thrown back on the Health and Habits of Parents as the 

 only really important factors in infantile mortality and the health of 

 surviving children. We have shown elsewhere that general health is 

 a markedly hereditary character 1 . With "Habits" the case is slightly 

 but not essentially different. There is evidence that the habits of the 

 mother are not only very sensibly correlated with her health (-52 in 

 Bradford), but that the father's habits are also associated with the 

 mother's health (-49 in Bradford). These matters will be discussed at 

 length when our full data are published, but it is clear that the father 

 of bad habits is far less frequently able to procure a wife of good health 

 than a father of good habits, and that apart from the heredity of the 

 orderly habit, the orderliness of the mother is sensibly a matter of 

 health itself an hereditary character. As far as the evidence of 

 Rochdale, Bradford and Blackburn extends, we seem safe in asserting 

 that the Physical Environment correlation will give a mean value 

 below -05, and that probably if we could fully correct for health and 

 habits of both parents the mean value would scarcely exceed -03 

 or -04. 



In regard to the Indirect Parental Environment the correlations 

 when corrected for parental habits and health are of much the same 

 order. Only in the case of Blackburn do they reach in the matter 

 of insufficiency of food (-31) to any importance. But in this case we 

 cannot correct for habits of parents, although we know that insufficiency 

 of food is veiy sensibly correlated with father's health ('4O 2 ), father's 

 wage ('45 2 ) and his regularity of work ('6i 2 ), indirect environmental 

 factors of the parent, all closely associated, as experience from 

 elsewhere shows, with the father's habits. Thus we are left with the 

 Direct Parental Environment as the only sensible influence on the 

 mortality and health of children up to twelve months of age. But 

 when we look at such factors as cleanliness of house and use of 

 ventilation, and note how the crude Rochdale values are reduced by 

 correcting for habits of parents, the crude Blackburn values by 

 correcting for health of parents and the crude Bradford values by 



1 See Biometrika, " On the Hereditary Character of General Health," vol. ix, 

 pp. 320 329 and "Questions of the Day and of the Fray," No. VI, Eugenics and 

 Public Health, Cambridge University Press. 



* Values for Blackburn. 



