No. 590] TRANSMISSION OF DEGENERACY 



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the results are very little if any improved over the two 

 above combinations. Seventeen such matings gave only 

 three failures or early abortions, but a high proportion, 

 23 per cent., of stillborn litters arose, while 10 living lit- 

 ters, consisting of only 12 individuals, were born. In all 

 20 full-term young were born and only about one in three 

 of them survived. In this experiment, although one mate 

 was a normal animal, the F 2 mate carried germ cells of 

 so inferior a quality that the output of the combination, 

 admitting the numbers are small, leaves no doubt of the 

 transmission, through three generations, of defective con- 

 ditions induced by alcoholizing the great grandparents of 

 the offspring on only one side of the family, or in only 

 one of the parental lines. 



The last line of the table gives the records of mixed 

 combinations of ¥ 1 and F 2 individuals, and here the data 

 are closely similar to those obtained from other combina- 

 tions of these animals ; only about 25 per cent, of the full- 

 term young born are capable of surviving, while 78.5 per 

 cent, of the control young are living. 



Briefly, then, 571 matings tabulated in Table I, the rec- 

 ords to July 1, 1915, have given rise to 682 full-term 

 young, as well as a large number of premature abortions. 

 A careful study of all these young animals extending 

 over a period of five years has afforded data which con- 

 vincingly show that the treatment of either the male or the 

 female guinea pig with fumes of alcohol affects the qual- 

 ity of the offspring to which these animals give rise even 

 when paired with normal mates. And further, the changed 

 quality of the offspring is subsequently transmitted 

 through succeeding generations with even more severe 

 marks of degeneration and deformity than those exhib- 

 ited by the offspring of the directly treated animals. 



Other combinations and back crosses are now in prog- 

 ress which are fully in line with the above, but which have 

 not yet afforded sufficient analytical data to record. 



The defects caused by the alcohol treatment seem to be 

 la rgely confined to the central nervous system and organs 



