122 The American Naturalist. . [ February, 
The career of the wretched Don Carlos, eldest son of Philip 
II, may fitly be mentioned here. At an early age he showed 
a furious and wholly ungovernable temper, a delight in cruelty 
_ for its own sake and a propensity to ignoble vices; in short he 
displayed every characteristic of moral insanity. Thrown into 
prison by his brother, fits of fury, and of exhaustion from his. 
vices were till lately judged to be the cause of his death, but 
modern researches show that he was one of the many secret 
victims of his merciless parent. 
During the lives of the two sovereigns who succeeded Philip 
II, the sword of Damocles which hung over the royal house of 
Spain remained suspended, only to fall with crushing weight. 
on the pitiable Charles II, in whom “ Nature stamped out in- 
sanity in sterile idiocy.” It must, however, be remarked that. 
Nature took nearly two hundred years in accomplishing this 
process, even in conditions of the most unfavorable environ- 
ment, and after repeated alliances with the tainted blood of 
Austria and Portugal. Charles II showed all the signs of the 
final stages of race degeneracy. Until his sixth or seventh 
year he was unable to stand, and was nursed on the knees of 
the ladies of the Court; his prognathous misshapen jaw could 
not be closed and he was constantly slavering; moreover his 
impotence, whilst it did not prevent the immolation of two 
young princessess as his nominal wives, was so well-known in 
Europe that intrigues, with regard to the succession to the 
Crown of Spain, went on throughout his miserable life Semi- 
idiotic as was his mental condition, he was capable of suffering 
all the mental tortures that superstition could inflict, and his 
dying bed was surrounded by venal priests who threatened 
eternal damnation if his successor were not named according 
to their desires. So ended the direct male line of the Spanish 
Hapsburgs, descendants of the mad Joanna through her eldest. 
son. 
The Austrian Hapsburgs. The history of the Austrian 
Hapsburgs, descended from Joanna through her second son 
Ferdinand, presents much brighter features than those of the 
Spanish house. It is difficult, if not impossible, to apportion 
the share which the pernicious teaching of the Jesuits and the 
