September 20, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



449 



in 11.6 per cent, instances. One cause of 

 this difference, perhaps the chief one, is 

 that the mothers, for various reasons which 

 will occur to you, are often known when the 

 fathers are not. The parents of 860 of the 

 1,924 children, 326 men and 534 women, an 

 aggregate of 44.6 per cent., were either un- 

 known or were known to be normal. In but 

 22 instances (1.1 per cent.) were the parents 

 reported to be relatives. This was true in 

 the case of 10 men and 12 women. 



The physical and mental condition of 

 the parents of these 889 males is more spe- 

 cifically given as follows : 



Mother defective, father unknown or 



normal 348 or 39.1% 



Father defective, mother unknown or 



normal 83 or 9.3% 



Both parents defective 122 or 13.7% 



Parents unknown or normal 326 or 36.6% 



Parents related 10 or 1.1%, 



889 99.8% 



141, or 15.8 per cent., of the males are ille- 

 gitimate. 



The physical and mental condition of the 

 parents of these 1,035 females more par- 

 ticularly stated is as follows : 



Mother defective, father normal or un- 

 known 318 or 30.7% 



Father defective, mother normal or un- 

 known 68 or 6.5% 



Both parents defective 103 or 9.9% 



Parents unknown or normal 534 or 51.5% 



Parents related 12 or 1.1% 



1,035 99.7% 



(' Defective ' in the above means either 

 mentally or physically defective. ) 



Of the 717 feeble-minded women, 163, 

 or 22 per cent., have had illegitimate chil- 

 dren. These 163 women have had 248 

 children, an average of 1.52 each. They 

 range in number from 1 to 8 to the mother. 



Perhaps it is well to refer to a few illus- 

 trations of the ancestors of the' persons 

 whom we have been discussing. 



In one of the county poor asylums of 

 Indiana, years ago, were a man and his 



wife, who are reported to have been of a 

 low grade of intelligence, if not actually 

 feeble-minded. The direct descendants of 

 this couple, with those who entered the 

 family through marriage, number 67, com- 

 prising three generations. One of the men, 

 who is fairly bright, has raised a good fam- 

 ily ; another is an intelligent barber ; two 

 men have served in the army, but the ma- 

 jority of the family are feeble-minded, illit- 

 erate and of low morals, and their history 

 is one of drunkenness, prostitution and 

 crime. The marriage relation has been 

 lightly regarded, and doubtless many of 

 the unions were those of common law. 

 Some of these persons are self-supporting, 

 but a much larger number of them are 

 or have been supported by the public in 

 county or state institutions. 



One woman I recall is the mother of 

 eleven children, ten of them by one hus- 

 band, one by another. A feeble-minded 

 man whose history is known to us, was 

 father of twenty children but was married 

 several times. 



Another group of 241 families in which 

 there are two or more generations of 

 feeble- mindedness has 970 persons who are 

 blood relations, that is an average of 4.02 

 to each family. Of these families, 221 

 have two generations of feeble-minded- 

 ness, sixteen have three generations, three 

 have four generations and one has five gen- 

 erations. The number of direct descend- 

 ants who are feeble-minded is known to be 

 726. That is to say, 74.8 per cent, are 

 feebleminded. Does anything else repro- 

 duce itself so surely ? In addition to this 

 there are 25 who show other evidences of 

 defectiveness. But 197 are normal or their 

 mental and physical condition is unknown. 



In the first generation 103 men and 203 

 women (306) were the parents of 248 

 children. Of these 84 were males and 164 

 were females. It is observed that almost 

 twice as many women as men were known 



