month of life; twenty-two were designated as sick, and ten as healthy--while in the non-alcoholic families, five were still-born or died early, six were sick, and fifty were healthy. Thus only 17.5 per cent. in the alcoholic families were healthy, while eighty-two per cent. in the non-alcoholic families were healthy, and only eighteen per cent. not healthy. The percentages, therefore, were almost exactly reversed. These statistics mean that not alone may the chronic alcoholic bequeath his poisoned nervous system to posterity, but from the statistics in Switzerland of the imbecile children, we must realize that even a temporary debauch may leave a curse upon the innocent child; they also mean that alcohol produces those processes in the individual which tend to the degeneration of the race, and tend after a few generations to extinction, and thus does Nature benefit the race by turning a curse into a blessing through the extinction of the degenerate. Footnote: [1] I have heard of a New Yorker who gave up his attendance as a member of the executive committee of a prominent and very useful reform association because, though an occasional smoker, he could not endure the tobacco-laden atmosphere of the room where the committee met. To this day his associates probably think him a very lukewarm worker in the cause! Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. The following misprints have been corrected: "merly" corrected to "merely" (page 156) "dangerout" corrected to "dangerous" (page 199) "coedine" corrected to "codeine" (page 216) Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. End of Project Gutenberg's Habits that Handicap, by Charles B. Towns