S. M. Bemiss,[115] of New Orleans, Louisiana, giving a report of the condition of the offspring of 580 intermarriages of first cousins, gathered mostly by medical men from nearly every State in the Union, says: 2,778 children were born of these cousins, of whom 793 were defective, 117 deaf and dumb, 63 blind, 231 idiotic, 24 insane, 44 epileptic, 189 scrofulous, 53 deformed, and 637 died early. While these figures seem very demonstrative, they contain a great many elements of error. One of these is incidentally pointed out by Arthur Mitchell,[116] who finds that under favourable conditions of life the apparent ill effects of consanguineous marriages are frequently almost nil, whilst if the children are ill-fed, badly housed and clothed, the evil may become very marked. He calculates that the percentage of consanguineous marriages generally in Scotland is 1·3, or ten times less than with the parents of idiots. Taking his figures a strong case seems to be made out in support of the opinion that idiocy, among other evils, results from intermarriage. Langdon Down, although his figures are not of so unfavourable a character, admits consanguinity as one of the causes of deterioration. George H. Darwin concluded from a careful investigation that about 4 per cent. of all marriages in England are between first cousins, and between 2 and 3 per cent. in the smaller towns and in the country; with these he compared the rate of similar marriages among the parents of lunatics and idiots in asylums, and found it to be about 3 or 4 per cent.--not higher, therefore, than in the general population. Huth[117] cites instances occurring regularly at the present day among certain isolated communities (St. Kilda, Pitcairn, and Iceland) without apparent evil consequences to the race. Such marriages were common among the North American Indians and the South Sea Islanders, people among whom idiocy and other degenerate hereditary conditions were remarkably rare. These cases, Strahan remarks, deal with peculiarly healthy communities. Therein lies the secret of such intermarriage proving innocent of evil to the offspring. Were such intermarriage common among the degenerates the result would be disastrous.