ii4 THE KALLIKAK FAMILY 



Taking this family as a whole, we have the following 

 figures : 



There were 41 matings where both parents were feeble- 

 minded. They had 222 feeble-minded children, with 

 two others that were considered normal. These two 

 are apparent exceptions to the law that two feeble- 

 minded parents do not have anything but feeble-minded 

 children. We may account for these two exceptions 

 in one of several ways. Either there is a mistake in 

 calling them normal, or a mistake in calling the parents 

 feeble-minded ; or else there was illegitimacy somewhere 

 and these two children did not have the same father as 

 the others of the family. Or we may turn to the Men- 

 delian law and we discover that according to that law 

 there might be in rare instances such a combination of 

 circumstances that a normal child might be born from 

 two parents that function as feeble-minded. For prac- 

 tical purposes it is, of course, pretty clear that it is 

 safe to assume that two feeble-minded parents will 

 never have anything but feeble-minded children. 



Again, we find that there were eight cases where the 

 father was feeble-minded and the mother normal, and 

 there were ten normal children and ten defective. 



There were twelve cases where the father was normal 

 and the mother feeble-minded, with seven feeble-minded 



