Since then all the children of criminal ancestry are not themselves criminal or likely to become criminals through an hereditary taint, can a proposal be accepted which would not only prevent the birth of the hereditary criminal, but would also prevent the birth of several persons who would have become good and useful citizens. Thus far only the criminal descended from a criminal ancestry has been considered, whereas, as was stated previously, there are a considerable number of criminals termed "hereditary" criminals who are descended from a drunken ancestry. The proportion of these is about 33 per cent. of the whole. The impossibility of the success of Dr Chapple's remedy is very apparent from the insurmountable difficulties that would be experienced in determining with exactitude when a person was so degenerate in his own system as to make it positive that his prospective offspring would be born a criminal defective. Uncertainty, in this matter, reigns supreme. There must remain then but very little support for Dr Chapple's proposal when we discover firstly:--that the criminal is very rarely a parent, and secondly:--that in every case a taint is not transmitted from parent to child. Its sphere of effectiveness is restricted by the very circumstances of the case, and even within that restricted sphere its operation would be most clumsy for it would prevent the birth of all a criminal's children, good and bad alike. Thus it would become both a moral and economic failure. Dr Chapple has taken it for granted that a criminal's rate of increase is at least equal to the average if not indeed, for certain reasons, considerably greater, and that he in all cases transmits an hereditary taint to his offspring. Then he seeks for a remedy whereby the transmission of this taint may be avoided and he can find none other than one which prevents the very possibility of the prospective child being born. Before coming to such a drastic conclusion enquiry might have been made to discover whether there might not exist a remedy which would be a remedy in the truest sense. That is a remedy which would, while it would prevent the transmission of the taint, yet it would not interfere with reproduction. Such a remedy would be in fact a method for the reformation of the criminal, for if the criminal were reformed the problem would be solved. If he were transformed into an honest and industrious man then the transmission of the criminal taint is at once prevented. There are some, however, who maintain that the criminal is incorrigible and that reformatory agencies have invariably failed. They look upon all attempts on behalf of the criminal as a useless expenditure of energy and money. This question of the possibility or otherwise of the reform of the criminal must now be settled before we can proceed further.