No. 590] 



TRANSMISSION OF DEGENERACY 



67 



the defects and the type of injury induced by the alcohol 

 treatment, since the total numbers were not large and 

 the F 2 animals had only a few nintings, while further gen- 

 erations had not become available for breeding. 



The same experiments have now been continued for 

 more than five years and a number of animals have been 

 used, over 700, which cover the behavior of four genera- 

 tions and supply data of sufficient extent to allow a more 

 thorough analytical consideration of the heredity prob- 

 lem concerned. 



Experiments of this nature on mammals are fraught 

 with many difficulties, slowness of breeding, small size of 

 litters, difficulty of handling, etc. Yet such material of- 

 fers one very great advantage in that the quality of the 

 offspring and generations studied is of such a complex 

 that one is enabled to detect indications of rather slight 

 injuries or changes in the material carriers of heredity 

 which would not become evident on lower forms with less 

 diversity in their methods of behavior and structural ap- 

 pearance. In other words, we take it that such condi- 

 tions as are spoken of as racial degeneracy in man and 

 mammals are often very difficult or even at times im- 

 possible to detect in lower forms. 



These conditions are for many reasons thought to be 

 inherited. If so their inheritance must be due to a path- 

 ological condition of the material carriers of heredity, 

 the chromosomes, or what not, since they are not normal 

 states and, like diseases, are constantly arising in normal 

 families on account of one or another form of intoxica- 

 tion. Is it possible then to produce such a racial degen- 

 eracy artificially by treating only one generation of the 

 animals and by so doing observe a pathological behavior 

 of the carriers of heredity? Arguing from analogy there 

 must be pathological heredity due to diseased or altered 

 chromosomes in the germ cells just as truly as there is a 

 ^own pathological behavior of every other organ and 

 tissue of the animal body. 



It becomes then a problem to study the possible meth- 



