394 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. SLII. No. 1081 



in warfare under modern conditions, and described 

 the effect of this dysgenic factor on modern his- 

 tory. 



Samuel C. Kohs, of the House of Correction, 

 Chicago, taking as his subject "Eugenics and the 

 Unconscious, ' ' tvarned those doing research in the 

 heredity of human psychical traits that they were 

 in many cases whoUy superficial, and that defi- 

 nition of the traits which they discussed was a 

 prerequisite of intelligent treatment. He then de- 

 scribed some of the recent studies of the uncon- 

 scious mind, which indicate that many traits -n 

 children, which are commonly believed to have 

 been inherited from parents, might in reality be 

 due rather to impress on the unconscious mind, 

 during the early years of childhood. Most of the 

 work on the inheritance of mental characters in 

 man is of doubtful value, he declared, because of 

 any one or more of the following reasons: 



1. Inaccurate tools with which to measure the 

 ability or capacity. 



2. Amateur field workers. 



3. The use of the questionnaire method. 



4. Where more than one field worker was neces- 

 sary for obtaining the data, the differences in the 

 individual standards of the field workers vitiated 

 the results. 



5. Being told for what to look, and possessing 

 the popular conceptions regarding the inheritabil- 

 ity of all sorts of traits, it is only just to assume 

 that many of the assistants very easily found what 

 was not there. 



6. The study of character and personality is still 

 in its infancy. To assume that certain peculiari- 

 ties are due to the presence or absence of specific 

 determiners can, in our present state of knowl- 

 edge, hardly be substantiated by actual facts. 



7. Some students approach the inheritance of 

 mental traits too much from a biological point of 

 view, and therefore go astray. 



A. J. Eosanoff and Helen E. Martin, of the 

 Kings Park State Hospital, Long Island, N. Y., 

 submitted a preliminary report of a study on the 

 offspring of the insane, which indicates that the 

 forms of insanity considered behave as Mendelian 

 recessives. 



Ethel H. Thayer, of the Mendocino State Hos- 

 pital, Talmage, Calif., described some of the caco- 

 genic problems of California. She mentioned that 

 the state sterilization law is now almost inopera- 

 tive, because defectively drawn so that it can not 

 be applied to the feeble-minded, the most impor- 

 tant of the caeogenie classes which come under its 

 scope. 



Surgeon W. C. Billings, of the U. S. Public 

 Health Service, Angel Island (San Francisco), 

 Calif., described in some detail the administra- 

 tion of the immigration laws at California ports. 

 Nearly all the immigrants are Asiatics, and there- 

 fore offer little of importance to eugenics, because 

 marriages between them and the white population 

 of the United States are extremely rare. 



Walter B. Swift, in charge of the Voice Clinic 

 of the Boston State Hospital, spoke on the possi- 

 bility of voice inheritance. He discussed the in- 

 heritance of bone forms and body shapes as a 

 basis upon which to build. The transmission of 

 bone cavities as a further foundation. Considera- 

 tion of the Indians ' ' ' high cheek bones ' ' and the 

 straight front nose of the Greek. The equine nose 

 as found in the Jew. Such transmissions of bony 

 exteriors — as an indication that cavities they con- 

 tain are also inherited at least in some measure. 

 If cavities are inherited then vocal elements based 

 upon cavity formation for their fundamental quali- 

 ties and overtones may also possibly be trans- 

 mitted. Evidence from other sources. Illustrative 

 cases. 



The plant breeding section met all day on Au- 

 gust 5, hearing the following papers: 



Ernest B. Babeock, University of California, de- 

 scribed walnut mutant investigations. "In 1912 I 

 discovered an apparently normal tree of the Cali- 

 fornia black walnut which annually bears a good 

 crop of nuts, most of which when planted produce 

 typical black walnuts, but a few of which produce 

 a new type of walnut which I have named quer- 

 ciiia because of its general resemblance to a small- 

 leaved oak. This tree is probably the only peren- 

 nial mutating individual accessible for experimen- 

 tation. By using root-tips from these two types 

 of seedlings we have ascertained the number of 

 chromosomes characteristic of each and that the 

 number is the same for both, thirty-four. Hence 

 the mutation must be due to some other cause than 

 a change in chromosome number. Breeding experi- 

 ments are under way which may throw light on 

 the nature of this mutation." 



L. D. Batehelor, University of California, ex- 

 l^laining problems in walnut breeding, pointed out 

 that most of the Persian (English) walnut groves 

 of California are composed of seedlings, and that 

 these must be worked over to the best strains, if 

 the industry is to have its maximum eifieiency. 



Howard Gilkey, of the University of California, 

 emphasized the need for breeding ornamentals that 

 would meet the landscape gardener's requirement 

 of definite types of form. 



