244 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
most diverse results. Huth has compiled the following table from 
several writers who have given the percentage of consanguinity 
among the parents of idiotic offspring: 
Feeble-Minded Offspring from Consanguineous Marriages 
Total No. of | No. Derived for 
Observers Feeble-Minded | Consanguineous | Percentage 
Cases Marriage 
Gralhaus............ 1,388 53 3.8 
HOWE itso sean cages 359 17 (or 20) 4.7 (or 5.5) 
Down ven vey eave 852 60 76 
Treland............. 213 18 8.5 
Comm. of Conn...... 160 20 12.5 
Bemiss............. 15.0 
Mitchell............ 519 98 18.1 
The fluctuations in these data do not prove the contention of 
Huth that the statistics are entirely worthless. They are what 
one would expect in the light of Mendelian theory. And there is 
nothing surprising in the results obtained by Dr. Voisin who 
found, as the result of a careful examination of 1,077 of his 
patients at Bicétre and Saltpétreiére, that in no one instance 
could healthy consanguinity be regarded as a cause of idiocy, 
epilepsy or insanity. The same observer reports on an isolated 
community at Batz in which there were five cousin marriages and 
31 second cousin marriages with no malformations or mental de- 
fects. Howe, on the other hand, found among the parents of 359 
idiots, 17 and possibly 20 cases of consanguineous marriages. 
These consanguineous parents, several of whom were scrofulous 
and intemperate, produced 95 children ‘‘of whom 44 were idiotic, 
12 others were scrofulous, 1 was dead and 1 was a dwarf.”’ The 
percentage of idiots given in the table as the findings of Bemiss 
rests upon an inference not very well supported by the facts. 
Out of 833 consanguineous marriages he found that 7.8 per cent 
