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THE AMEBIC AN NATURALIST [Vol. L 



control matings is the fact that from 90 matings only two 

 stillborn litters were produced and, as mentioned above, 

 both of these litters were of so large a size that the 

 mothers seemed unable to successfully deliver them and 

 one of the mothers failed to recover from the process and 

 died a few days later. These two cases make the con- 

 trol records appear worse than they actually should, but 

 in spite of this the control matings have given data 

 equally as good as those generally obtained by careful 

 breeding experiments with vigorous normal stocks. The 

 stock in these experiments is unquestionably good, as the 

 control matings very readily show. 



Four normal females were mated and then treated with 

 alcohol throughout their periods of pregnancy and, as the 

 sixth horizontal line of the table indicates, such a treat- 

 ment was not at all injurious in these particular cases. 

 It actually happened that some of these young were un- 

 usually vigorous. The numbers are very small, but this 

 is a direct test, and if such a treatment were really decid- 

 edly effective in its action on the embryo or fetus in utero 

 these eight young animals should have at least shown 

 some response. It is very possible that after the treat- 

 ment has been continued for a long time, a year or more, 

 that the mother then presents a uterine environment un- 

 favorable for normal development, since the offspring of 

 such individuals are almost always subnormal. In these 

 cases, however, the inferior quality of the offspring may 

 be due to the action of the alcoholic treatment on the 

 ovarian germ cells rather than the direct environmental 

 effect on the developing embryo or fetus, there is no way 

 at such a stage to separate the two possible effects. 



The next three horizontal lines, seventh, eighth and 

 ninth, give the data resulting from the matings in vari- 

 ous combinations of the ¥ x animals, that is, offspring 

 from alcoholic parentage, but which are not themselves 

 treated with alcohol. The records of these non-treated 

 F, individuals are most instructive for an understanding 

 of the actual influences of the alcoholic treatments. 



