No. 563] EFFECT OF INTOXICATING MALE PARENT 677 



ities and developmental arrests are also common in the 

 same families. In other words, weak germ cells or the 

 poor developmental environment runs in the family, and 

 hare-lip and cleft palate are merely the external expres- 

 sions of these conditions. 



The interpretation may be concretely expressed as 

 follows: Mammals treated with injurious substances, 

 such as alcohol, ether, lead, etc., suffer from the treat- 

 ments by having the tissues of their bodies injured. 

 When the reproductive glands and germ cells become 

 injured in this way they give rise to offspring showing 

 weak and degenerate conditions of a general nature, and 

 every cell of these offspring having been derived from the 

 injured egg or sperm cell are necessarily similarly in- 

 jured and can only give rise to other injured cells and 

 thus the next generation of offspring are equally weak 

 and injured, and so on. The only hope for such a line of 

 individuals is that it can be crossed by normal stock, in 

 which case the vigor of the normal germ cell in the com- 

 bination may counteract, or at any rate reduce, the extent 

 of injury in the body cells of the resulting animal. By 

 continually introducing normal mates into such a line 

 the defects might be entirely eliminated, but the continued 

 interbreeding of animals with defects or systemic injuries 

 will doubtless result in the death of the race. 



The offspring from a diseased father derives all of its 

 cells from the poor sperm, thus each cell is poor in part 

 and is so passed from generation to generation. 



The present experiments are being continued and a 

 large number of matings between second and third gener- 

 ation animals are now made. Various combinations of 

 second generation animals are being tried in order to 

 compare the effects resulting from paternal and maternal 

 treatments, as well as the doubled effects. Two animals, 

 both derived from alcoholic fathers, are mated, others 

 from alcoholic mothers, and the various crosses between 

 these classes are tried. In other cases second generation 

 sisters are mated one with a normal and the other with 



