and tolerably useful under restraint, but who would otherwise doubtless continue the family traits of her ancestry. These are shown on the charts here reproduced. The symbols may seem at first sight to be somewhat complicated, but it is worth while to become acquainted with this kind of terminology. Males are indicated by squares; females by circles. Black squares and circles with a white "F" mean feeble-minded persons; N means normal. When there is no letter the condition is not known. We see on chart II. that Deborah is the illegitimate daughter of a feeble-minded mother, whose father and mother were both feeble-minded and whose sister and two brothers surviving infancy were also feeble-minded. This is in accordance with Mendelian expectation. Deborah had an even chance of being normal; her mother had probably none. In this whole family 41 matings have occurred in which both parents were feeble-minded; they had 222 feeble-minded children with only two who were considered normal. Justin, the feeble-minded and criminal grandfather of Deborah, was one of fifteen children of feeble-minded parents, all but one of whom are said to have been feeble-minded. The father, Millard, was the oldest son shown on chart I., the family consisting of five children known to be feeble-minded and two normal children. The parents of this family consisted of a feeble-minded father and a normal mother. The father was the illegitimate son of a feeble-minded mother and of a man of good New Jersey family to whom the name Martin Kallikak is assigned.
This Martin Kallikak afterwards married and had the additional children shown on chart I. They have had some 500 descendants, all normal, all but three good representative citizens, many of them leaders in the professions and in their communities. The almost equal number of descendants through the illegitimate and feeble-minded son supplied 143 persons known to be feeble-minded and only 46 found to be normal. Among them were 36 illegitimate children, 33 sexually immoral and 24 confirmed drunkards.
A comparison of the two lines of descent from Martin Kallikak certainly exhibits a dramatic contrast, but it is scarcely the natural experiment in true heredity which Dr. Goddard claims it to be. If, on the one hand, Martin Kallikak had left neglected illegitimate children, without taint of feeble-mindedness, it is not likely that they would have established prosperous lines of descent. On the contrary, they would probably have intermarried with the degenerate and feeble-minded. If, on the other hand, the feeble-minded son had been legitimate, he would have been properly cared for, and in all probability would have left no such descendants as came from the illegitimate and neglected child.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the death of Dr. John Shaw Billings, director of the New York Public Library, previously surgeon and lieutenant colonel in the army; of Dr. Philip Hanson Hiss, professor of bacteriology in Columbia University; of Mr. John Fritz, the iron-master of Bethlehem, Pa.; of Dr. Samuel Allen Lattimore, emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Rochester; of Sir William White, F.R.S., the distinguished British naval architect, and of Dr. G. de Laval, the well-known Swedish engineer and inventor.
