EDITORS' TABLE. 
At the last meeting of the Society of Charities and Corrections 
the Rev. Oscar C. McCulloch, of Indianapolis, read a paper on the 
Tribe of Ishmael, in which he detailed the result of his studies on 
the pauper families of Indianapolis. The story he tells is a sad 
one. It is the history of generation after generation of paupers 
and criminals, of people sunk so low as not to have the slightest 
aspiration for a better life, who obey Scriptural injunctions only in 
that they are fruitful and multiply their vicious kind. Five gene- 
rations of thirty families are traced, and of all the individuals whose 
records are worked out, but one ever emerged into a respectable 
life. This Tribe of Ishmael is but a repetition of the Jukes family, 
but it brings again to prominence a problem with which society has 
to deal. What shall be done to check the growth of these and sim- 
ilar parasites ? They are sunk to a depth where no church can 
reach them ; the so-called charity which gives to beggars and which 
patronizes the halt and maimed but encourages them in their pres- 
ent life ; our present laws having no terrors for them, for imprison- 
ment means but a winter of warmth, comfort and idleness. Were 
pauperism and beggary the only sins of these people then existence 
might be endured, but in the case of both the Jukes family and this 
tribe of Ishmael— and the same is true of all other similar families— 
every species of crime from murder down has been perpetrated by 
nbers. 
What ( 
in society do to protect itself against these pests ? 
question which must be answered. Growth of 
proportionate increase of this undesirable class. An answer seems 
clifficult; in fact, we can only see one direction from which relief can 
come. The teaching of evolution must be recognized and incor- 
porated in our laws. Evolution teaches that variation, the influ- 
ence of environment, and adaptability to changed conditions are 
important factors in organic life, but it also teaches that these are 
fixed and perpetuated by heredity. It is this aspect of evolution 
that seems to point to the answer. The children of these people in- 
herit scarcely a good trait, but are heirs to all that is vicious and 
criminal in their parents. They are begotten in criminality, nur- 
