128 ZOOLOGY 



Results vary such, is inherited ; but alcohol may affect the germ cells 

 and'power * n sucn a wa 7 as to produce defectives of various kinds, 

 of resistance even when it does not injuriously affect the health of 

 the parents. This injurious result may be carried 

 through generations, though they have never touched 

 alcohol. On the other hand, if the dose is less in pro- 

 portion to the power of resistance, a large number of 

 gametes may wholly escape injury, and these may be 

 the strpngest members of the gametic population. Pro- 

 fessor Karl Pearson of London has published statistics 

 which seem to indicate the absence of any inferiority 

 in the offspring of a series of workingmen. addicted to 

 alcohol. Thus the practical results may be diametri- 

 cally opposite, according to the ratio between the poison 

 and the ability to resist it, and the way in which the 

 poison operates. A priori considerations indicate what 

 is possible, but actual experience is necessary to show 

 what will happen in the case of any particular species 

 or race, under any particular conditions. 



Dr. Goddard's evidence, showing the association of 

 alcoholism with nervous disorders or feeble-mindedness, 

 no longer possesses quite the meaning he attached to it. 

 It is indeed a symptom, but the guinea-pig experiments 

 show that nervous defects are precisely those which re- 

 sult from the injury to the germ plasm by alcohol in a 

 previous generation. Of course no one will claim that 

 they are necessarily due to this cause, but in any given 

 case it at least appears possible. 



