180 PRINCIPLES OF STOCK-BREEDING. 



asylum in Hartford (United States), we find that one 

 hundred and three of the deaf and dumb had been, 

 or are now, married. In forty-one of these marriages, 

 both parties were deaf and dumb ; in twenty-three, 

 one could speak or hear. Of these one hundred and 

 three, thirty-one had not become parents, but the re- 

 maining seventy-two were parents of one hundred and 

 two children, of whom ninety-eight could hear and 

 speak, and four only were deaf and dumb. One of 

 the four was the only child of his parents, both of 

 whom were congenitally deaf. Besides the parents, 

 the paternal grandfather, a sister of the father, and 

 two sons of this sister, were deaf and dumb. In the 

 other family, that of three children, the father lost 

 his hearing by disease at two years of age, and had 

 no known relative deaf and dumb. The mother was 

 born deaf, and had a deaf and dumb brother." 



In commenting upon the fallacy of inferences 

 drawn from the preceding statistics, and particularly 

 on those presented by M. Boudin in his paper on 

 consanguineous marriages above quoted, Mr. Sedg- 

 wick says : " In the first place, with regard to the sup- 

 posed frequency of consanguineous marriages among 

 the Jews, M. Isidor, the Grand Kabbi of Paris, states 

 that such marriages are far less frequent than is gen- 

 erally believed ; and, moreover, if the inference drawn 

 from the great prevalence of deaf -mutism among the 

 Jews of Berlin were correct, the statistics would be 

 found to coincide with those of deaf -mutism among the 

 Jews elsewhere, but such is not the case, for, although 



1 British and Foreign Medico- CMrurgical Review, July, 1861, p. 

 143. 



