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or otherwisely undesirable parenfs were herded together on an 

 island inhabited by a pious, but somewhat slow population of 

 lisherman's families. The anonymous author, wlio relates the 

 story seems to confound schoolchildren with germs ; and from the 

 fact that these hordes of illguarded children remained as they 

 were in their native slums, he concludes that the experiment 

 shows that even an ideal environment can not affect a morally 

 defective born child. Other people there are ? who want to know 

 nothing about inheritance ; and who believe that the non-genetic 

 factors count for so much that a permanent amelioration of the 

 environment is all that in the future will be found necessary. 

 Personally I am not much more inclined one way or the other. 

 The subject is essentially one of study rather than of opinion. 

 I fear that the greatest danger which threatens a sane and sober 

 study of eugenics will be that enterprising politicians will accen- 

 tuate the difference between the two opinions as to the course 

 to follow ; and will ruin the prospect of the necessary public 

 endowment of the study by taking either the „breeding-principle" 

 or the „amelioration-of-environment-principle" as planks in their 

 political platforms. 



