have one of the joints of the fingers missing.  There is a very prevalent idea that in close intermarriage in families variations and malformations often unfortunate for the individual are more common.  All experimental evidence obtained by interbreeding of animals shows that close interbreeding is not productive of variation, but that variations existing in the breed become accentuated.  Variations either advantageous or disadvantageous for the race or individual may either of them become more prevalent by close intermarriage.  It seems, however, to have been shown by the customs of the human race that very close intermarriage is disadvantageous.

Eugenics, which signifies an attempt at the betterment of the race by the avoidance of bad heredity, has within recent years attracted much attention and is of importance.  Some of its advocates have become so enthusiastic as to believe that it will be possible to breed men as cattle and ultimately to produce a race ideally perfect.  It is true that by careful selection and regulation of marriage certain variations, whether relating to coarse bodily form or to the less obvious changes denoted by function, can be perpetuated and strengthened.  That the Semitic race excels in commerce is probably due to the fact that the variation of the brain which affected favorably the mental action conducive to this form of activity, was favorable for the race in the hostile environment in which it was usually placed and transmitted and strengthened by close intermarriage.  It is impossible, however, to form a conception of what may be regarded as an ideal type of the human species.  The type which might be ideal in a certain environment might not be ideal in another, and environment is probably of equal importance with the material.  The eugenics movement has enormously stimulated research into heredity by the methods both of animal experimentation and observation, and study of heredity in man.  As in all of the beginning sciences there is not the close inter-relation of observed facts and theory, but there is excess of theory and dearth of facts.  Certain considerations, however, seem to be evident.  It would seem to be evident that individuals should be healthy and enabled to maintain themselves in the environment in which they are placed, but the qualities which may enable an individual successfully to adapt himself to factory life, or life in the crowds and strong competition of the city, may not be, and probably are not, qualities which are good for the race in general or for his immediate descendants.  At present our attempts to influence heredity should be limited to the heredity of disease only.  We can certainly say that intermarriage between persons who have tuberculosis or in whose families the disease has prevailed is disadvantageous for the offspring; the same holds true for insanity and for nervous diseases of all sorts, for forms of criminality, for alcoholism, and for those diseases which are long enduring and