4S6 



NATURE 



Li 



way to combininjf immunity from the disease with 

 other valuable qualities. Meanwhile, it is unwise to 

 lose the chance of preserving tliose other qualities, 

 which may now be linked with susceptibility to the 

 disease, for want of the sanitary precautions which 

 advancing knowledge puts in our power. Thus the 

 selectionist escapes from Mr, Balfour's dilemma, and 

 mav support with a clear conscience all elTorts towards 

 improvement in tlie environment, provided that it is 

 fully realised that improvements in the environment 

 alone will not necessarily improve the innate quali- 

 ties of the race, any more than better cow-stalls 

 will of themselves improve without limit our breeds 

 of cattle, and, provided that all efforts are also made 

 deliberately to encourage reproduction among the best 

 stocks, and to discourage it among the worst. 



But consideration of these general problems, in- 

 teresting though thev are, is not necessarily essential 

 to the application of the principles of heredity to tlie 

 treatment of destitution — the immediate object of the 

 conference opened by Mr, Balfour's speech. Whether 

 or no there is a general segregation of ability broadly 

 between the upper and the lower classes in this 

 country, it is undeniable that the ranks of the paupers 

 contain a certain proportion of those who, mentally 

 or phvsically, are hereditarily unsound. It is the fact 

 that the differential birth-rate is telling in favour of 

 the unsound as against the sound that is so sinister, 

 even more so than its effect on the relative rates of 

 reproduction of different social classes. 



No one denies that many fall into reach of the 

 Poor Law through no fault of their own. By 

 seasonal unemployment, by movements of trade, by 

 the pressure of temporary illness or economic misfor- 

 tune, relief becomes necessary. To meet these cases, 

 every attempt should be made to improve the organisa- 

 tion of the labour market, to obtain more effective 

 education, to prevent blind-alley occupations for boys 

 and girls. Such subjects met with their full share 

 of consideration at the conference, and will always 

 appeal with greater force to the philanthropist, who 

 wishes to relieve immediate distress, and to the poli- 

 tician who wishes to capture votes by doing so. 

 ; But, as all those who administer the Poor Law with 

 their eyes open know, these cases are but part of the 

 problem. A large number of the occupants of our 

 workhouses and prisons are congenitally defective in 

 mind or body. Often, for the feeble-minded or un- 

 sound themselves, there is no hope of improvement, 

 and, even in cases where, at great expense to 

 the community, they can be taught a trade in special 

 schools, as Mr. Balfour pointed out, their acquired 

 characters will not be inherited, and their offspring 

 will tend to reproduce their infirmities. The feeble- 

 minded are specially prolific, and, in this time of a 

 general fall in the birth-rate, are increasing relatively 

 to the other sections of the community. Several 

 years ago, a Royal Commission reported in favour of 

 the compulsory and permanent care and detention of the 

 mentally defective. That nothing has been done to 

 carry out the recommendations of the Commission, in 

 spite of the urgency of the case, is a standing disgrace 

 to the Government and to the Parliament of this 

 country. Were these unfortunates shielded from the 

 degradation which follows their so-called freedom, 

 and prevented from handing on their defects to future 

 generations, this part of the problem of destitution 

 would be solved, and a heavy burden of incompetence 

 and pauperism removed once for all from the shoulders 

 of the competent, who, there is now reason to fear, 

 often restrict the number of their offspring to meet 

 the increasing load of taxation required to support 

 the inefficient members of the communitv. 



Several of the special papers read to the .- 

 of the conference dealt with ths problem of i 

 defect as a cause of pauperism. On May lu Dr. i-. \\ 

 Mott and Dr. A. F. Treadgold dealt with the inv* . 

 and the feeble-minded in their hereditary a- 

 Dr. Mott pointed out the significance of the f.^ 

 a considerable proportion of the inmates of the Luik; 

 County Asylums were related to other inmates, whi 

 Dr. Treadgold gave evidence that feebleness of minu 

 was more prevalent in the rural districts. It should 

 be noted that rural districts which have specially b«« ■- 

 depleted by immigration to the towns seem panic 

 larly affected in this way. The worst strains get Ki 

 and the inbreeding of defective stocks intensifies t! 

 evil. Dr. Treadgold said that the real cause of tl. 

 existence of a certain class of parasitic pauper w. 

 germinal defect, and emphasised the folly of allowin;.; 

 such a class to propagate freely. On Wednesday Sir 

 William Chance pointed out that, whatever the cost 

 of segregation, it would be repaid in a generation 

 many times over by the saving in workhouses and 

 prisons. Other papers on mental defect in its bearing 

 on pauperism and crime were read bv Mr. T. Holmes, 

 Dr. C. H. Melland, Miss Mary Dendy, and Dr. F. 

 Needham, while Dr. C. W. Saleeby spoke on the 

 eugenic summary and demand. 



Whatever be the effect of the conference on legis- 

 lation or administration, it is impossible to follow 

 its proceedings without perceiving that the thinking 

 world is at last waking up to the fact that biological 

 knowledge has an intimate bearing on sociology. 

 The last few years have seen a great change in this 

 respect, and, though much more is yet to be done, 

 the future is full of hope. W. C. D. W. 



NO. 



2 171, VOL. 86] 



PLAGVE. 



THE recent epidemic of plague in northern China 

 with its 60,000 deaths, is remarkable in two 

 respects. First it was the most extensive manifesta- 

 tion of pneumonic plague in this pandemic ; and, 

 secondlv, it was characterised by a more or less 

 sudden cessation. It affords a warning as to the 

 capabilities of the disease, and as to one of its pos- 

 sible developments, and although the outbreak has 

 come to an end for the time being without any great 

 efforts in the direction of prevention, yet it has demon- 

 strated that the plague of the present day is as power- 

 ful for mischief and as capricious in action as that 

 of any period in the past centuries. Arising in or 

 close to eastern Mongolia, where the ordinary annual 

 epidemics of plague have for many years shown a 

 tendency to a comparatively high percentage of the 

 pneumonic type, this influenzal form, shorn of the 

 bubonic variety which has hitherto accompanied it 

 and has been its predominant partner, appears 

 to have been conveyed as early as October, 1910, to 

 some of the more recent settlements on the Man- 

 churian portion of the Trans-Siberian Railway. 



The increasing mortality in these settlements did 

 not attract anv particular attention until December, 

 when, in consequence of panic following an appre- 

 ciation of the situation, there ensued a great exodus 

 of the Chinese, both by rail and by road, to their 

 homes in the more southern provinces of Shinking, 

 Chili, and Shantung. To the infection thus carried 

 far and wide the rapid and extensive dissemination 

 of the disease and the formation of new centres may 

 be traced. But the virulence and great mortalitv 

 which characterised the epidemic in some places and 

 its comparative harmlessness in others are not s« 

 readily explained. The cause or causes of the 

 variations have always been, and still remain, a pe 



