Concerning crime and delinquency, we find that all evidence tends to show that an alarming increase is in progress although satisfactory data are hard to obtain. It is certain that there is a tremendously disproportionate increase in the number of prisoners in recent years compared with general population, for while the total population has increased three and one-half fold, the prison element has increased fifteen fold. According to Wier, in this country there are four and one-half times as many murders for every million of our population to-day as there were twenty years ago. It may be urged that this increase in prison population is not a disproportionate increase in the number of defectives or criminals, but only an increase in the number sent to prison, and this is probably a partial truth--but when we recall such pedigree as those of the Nams, the defective line of Kallikaks and other known unsound strains, he must be hopeful indeed who can find much consolation in this supposition. In any event, no such uncertainty exists regarding the number of murders and homicides, since these have in all probability been as fully recorded in the past as at present. =Vicious Surroundings Not a Sufficient Explanation in Degenerate Stocks.--=It is sometimes urged that we are not dealing in such cases with degenerate strains, but merely with unfortunate individuals who have been subjected to pernicious surroundings from the beginning. And it can not be denied that parents who are mentally defective, dissipated or syphilitic afford most noxious developmental and environmental conditions for their children. But when one notes how intimately the moral degeneracy in such stocks is bound up with some degree of feeble-mindedness, he is strongly skeptical toward the sufficiency of such an interpretation, although environment undoubtedly intensifies the results. Concerning this point Davenport says: "We have certain methods of testing whether it is bad environment or bad breeding which produced these people. Some of the children have been taken at an early age and 'placed out'. We have traced their subsequent history. In most cases they have turned out quite as bad as those who have remained at home. In a few cases they have turned out well, but it is also true that some of the children who remained at home in bad environment have turned out well." And to Davenport's testimony may we add that of Doctor Wilmarth, who, speaking of children at the home for feeble-minded, says: