safely led and tended all the way
to the child-bearing period of life, only to repeat their history, in
others.

Not only do defects "run in families," but they run in groups, and a
physical defect such as club-foot, cleft palate, or any arrested
development, is apt to be associated with some mental defect, and it is
the mental more than the physical defects of individuals that prevent
them being self-supporting helpful members of society.

In the "North American Review" for August, 1903, Sir John Gorst declares
that:--

"The condition of disease, debility, and defective sight and hearing, in
the public elementary schools in poorer districts, is appalling. The
research of a recent Royal Commission has disclosed that of the children
in the public schools of Edinburgh, 70 per cent, are suffering from
disease of some kind, more than half from defective vision, nearly half
from defective hearing, and 30 per cent, from starvation. The physical
deterioration of the recruits who offer themselves for the army is a
subject of increasing concern. There are grounds for at least suspecting
a growing degeneracy of the population of the United Kingdom,
particularly in the great towns."

The following table gives the charges before Magistrates in our
Courts:--

Year. Proportion per thousand of
mean population.

1894 24.76

1897 26.87

1898 29.42

1899 29.48

1900 31.54

1901 33.20

1902 35.19

Now who are the unfit? Are they more fertile than the fit? and do they
propagate their kind?

The following defects constitute their victims members of that great
class of degenerates who are unfit to procreate healthy normal
offspring. Many of these conditions are partly congenital and partly
acquired, but in the majority of defectives a transmitted taint is
present.

I. Congenital defects:--

1. Idiocy.
2. Imbecility.
3. Criminal Taint.
4. Insanity.
5. Inebriate Taint.
6. Pauperism.
7. Deaf Mutism.
8. Epilepsy.

II. Acquired defects:--

1. Crime.
2. Insanity.
3. Epilepsy.
4. Inebrity.
5. Confirmed Pauperism.

With the exception of the very young and the v