August 29, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



119 



wherever I have heard the question discussed among the 

 general public, there is the greatest surprise expressed that 

 the deaf should have hearing children. The discussions of 

 the past few years have left upon the minds of many intelli- 

 gent people the impression that the marriages of deaf-mutes 

 are the prolific cause of the increasing number of deaf people 

 in the United States. In considering the sociology of the 

 deaf, it is necessary to bear in mind the following facts: — 



The Clarke Institution at Northampton, Mass., opened in 

 1867. There have been several marriages among the pupils 

 of the school, but none of them have had deaf-mute offspring. 



There have been seventeen marriages of the pupils of the 

 Horace Mann School, Boston, hut none of the children of 

 these marriages are deaf. 



Principal Hutton of Halifax reports thirty marriages of 

 pupils from his school, but only in one case do the children 

 share the infirmity of the parents. 



Mr. Mathison, Superintendent of the Bellville Institution, 

 Ontario, says: "Six hundred and sixty-one children have 

 attended, or are in attendance, at this school, and from the 

 records I find that not a single parent of these children is 

 deaf." The principal of the Minnesota School, after an ex- 

 perience of twenty years, and those of California, Alabama, 

 and Mississippi, report a similar state of things in their re- 

 spective states. But perhaps the most satisfactory statistics 

 concerning the deaf are found in the reports of the Irish 

 Commissioners. In 1881 these commissioners report as fol- 

 lows: "An inquiry having been carried out in the censuses 

 of 1851, 1861, and 1871 as to the children of congenital deaf- 

 mutes, and the result being in each case of a negative char- 

 acter, it was not considered necessary to repeat this investi- 

 gation, as it appears evident that deafness and dumbness in 

 the parents have no influence in propagating the defect." 



In the census of 1871, a minute investigation was made 

 respecting the marriage-state of congenital deaf-mutes, and 

 from 115 unions there were found to be 315 children, of 

 which number only three were deaf. Compare now this 

 result with the number of deaf children from consanguineous 

 marriages, and we find 141 cases of congenital deafness from 

 the inter-marriage in 85 instances of first cousins; in 63 in- 

 stances of the marriage of second cousins there were 100 deaf 

 children; there were in all 324 cases of deafness from 194 

 intermarriages among relatives. One striking instance will 

 illustrate the fact that consanguinity in the parents is respon- 

 sible for a large percentage of deafness. 



The Irish Commissioners report that No. 6 in their returns 

 consisted of a family of five children whose parents were 

 second cousins, two of the five children were born deaf. The 

 father married a second time, but this wife was not related 

 to him, and the six children resulting from the union were 

 perfectly developed in all their faculties (Annals, Vol. xxx.. 

 No. I., p. 51). In the discussion on the papers read by Pro- 

 fessor Bell before some of our scientific associations, he ex- 

 pressed the opinion that consanguineous marriages were not 

 so productive of deaf-mute offspring as people generally 

 supposed. How accurate this opinion is, the facts already 

 quoted will show. No one claims that the mere fact of rela- 

 tionship is in itself a cause for deaf-mute offspring. It is 

 quite probable that some lurking disease, some hereditary 

 taint, becomes intensified in the offspring of consanguineous 

 parents, and the children in consequence become deaf, though 



why it should affect the hearing is a problem no one yet has 

 been able to solve. 



Professor Bell's indictment of the sign-language has been 

 completely answered by Dr. Williams, the principal of the 

 American Asylum at Hartford. By thirfy-two cases from 

 schools where signs are prohibited, he has shown that the 

 pupils taught there have all the peculiarities which mark the 

 diction of children educated by means of the sign-language. 



Permit me, in conclusion, to cite an instance which indi- 

 cates a tendency to be guarded against on the part of the 

 Professor, a tendency, too, which has marked the literature 

 of our deaf-mute press in their animadversions on the pub- 

 lished addresses which he has given to the public, but, wher- 

 ever found, the practice is indefensible. 



In his address at the Gallaudet Centennial in Philadelphia,, 

 the sweeping statement was made that there were 15,000> 

 children of school age not receiving any education. This 

 statement was at once challenged, but the Professor quoted 

 in his defence statistics given in advance by F. D. Wines of 

 Illinois. There would be some justification for this error, if 

 Mr. Wines had not publicly stated, before Professor Bell at 

 the convention in New York in 1884, that the number of 

 children of school age not under instruction was 5,000. The 

 number of deaf-mutes in the United States at the time of 

 this charge was 33,000. Of these, 15,000 were under twenty 

 years of age. The number of children between ten 'and 

 twenty years of age was 10,000, and of these 6,900 had been 

 under instruction during the period here considered, so that 

 the claim of 15,000 children not receiving any instruction 

 was very wide of the mark. (See Report to British Govern- 

 ment, p. 51.) W. G. Jenkins. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The railway tunnel under the St. Clair River, between Port 

 Huron, Mich., and Saruia, Ont., is rapidly approaching comple- 

 tion. Communication between the headings from the opposite 

 sides of the river was effected on Aug. 25. This tunnel is con- 

 sidered the greatest engineering work of the kind in this country. 



— On Saturday, Aug. 23, the remains of John Ericsson, the 

 eminent engineer and inventor, were removed from the vault 

 where they were deposited at the time of his death, in March, 

 1889, taken aboard the United States man-of-war Baltimore, 

 amid imposing ceremonies, and are now on the way to Sweden, 

 the place of his nativity. 



— Some habits of crocodiles have been lately described by M. 

 Voeltzkow. Travelling in Wituland, says Nature, he obtained in 

 January last seventy-nine new-laid eggs of the animal, from a 

 nest which was five or six paces from the bank of the Wagogona, 

 a tributary of the Ooi. The spot had been cleared of plants 

 in a circle of about six paces diameter, apparently by the croco- 

 dile having wheeled round several timgs. Here and there a few 

 branches had been laid, but there was no nest-building proper. 

 The so-called nest-May almost quite open to the sun (only a couple 

 of poor bushes at one part). The eggs lay in four pits, dug in the 

 hard, dry ground, about two feet obliquely down. Including eggs 

 broken in digging out, the total seems to have been eighty-five to 

 ninety. According to the natives, the crocodile, having selected 

 and prepared a spot, makes a pit in it that day, and lays about 

 twenty to twenty-five eggs in it, which it covers with earth. 

 Next day it makes a second pit, and so on. From the commence- 

 ment it remains in the nest, and it sleeps there till the hatching 

 of the young, which appear in about two months, when the heavy 

 rain period sets in. The egg-laying occurs only once in the year, 

 about the end of January or beginning of February. The animal, 

 which M. Voeltzknow disturbed, and saw drop into the water, 

 seemed to be the Crocodilus milgaris so common in East Africa. 



