at present in sight.

6. Of congenital deafness nearly half occurs in families often without
any positively known strain to indicate a predisposition to deafness.
Though concerning this deafness little in the present state of our
knowledge can be predicated, it is likely that with measures to secure
a race sound in all particulars there will be a reduction to a greater
or less extent of such deafness.

7. Consanguineous marriages do not take place, so far as deafness as an
effect is concerned, to any great extent; though where they do the
consequences are very marked. Their relation to deafness consists
apparently for the greatest part in the fact that the chances of its
transmission are thereby intensified, there being also a very strong
connection with the question of deaf relatives in general.

8. There are a certain number of families in society deeply tainted with
deafness, in evidence both lineally and collaterally, and this deafness
may be transmitted from parent to offspring.

9. Children of deaf parents are far more likely to be deaf than children
of hearing parents.

10. The great majority of the children of deaf parents, however, are
able to hear, the proportion of those who are not being small.

11. The likelihood of deaf offspring is not necessarily greater when
both parents are deaf than when one is deaf and the other hearing.

12. The liability to deaf offspring depends in the greatest degree upon
the presence or absence in the parents, deaf or hearing, of deaf
relatives, and, to a less extent, upon whether or not the existing
deafness is congenital--being especially great under a combination of
these two conditions.

13. Action in respect to marriages of the deaf likely to result in deaf
offspring seems for the present rather to be limited to moral forces.

14. Congenital deafness appears, from all the evidence, to be decreasing
relatively among the population, though probably only at a very slow
rate.

15. Finally, with respect to our original inquiry, it is to be said that
there are no indications that deafness will disappear from the human
race within any time which we can measure; and hence that the deaf are
to be in society not only for a season, but for a period apparently as
yet indefinite. Nevertheless the situation is not without encouragement.
From the data in our possession regarding deafness as a whole, it seems
certain that deafness is not on the increase relatively among the
po