DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY.--The difficulty is to devise and carry out some scheme for the purpose which shall be both feasible and agreeable to public sentiment. The latter consideration would prevent any attempt at active stirpiculture under State direction, although the State might indirectly affect the result by subsidiary regulations as to marriage and training of children. There is nothing, however, to prevent the systematic efforts of private individuals, and in such cases the causes which Darwin cites as interfering with the physical action of sexual selection would not operate. The most systematic experiment in stirpiculture of modern times was that originated by John Humphrey Noyes at the Oneida Community, in central New York, from 1868 to 1879. A paper on this experiment was read by Anita Newcomb McGee before the American Science Association in August, 1891, which was published in "The American Anthropologist," 1891, and the following facts are taken from that paper. AN EXPERIMENT IN STIRPICULTURE.--Noyes was the founder of a religious sect, the members of which, owing to their desire for freedom from sin, were called Perfectionists. Holiness was the first principle of their creed, and Noyes thought to transmit that condition from one generation to another by a process of stirpiculture. To overcome the "selfishness" of monogamic marriage he devised a "system of regulated promiscuity, beginning at earliest puberty, and by a method of his own invention he separated the amative from the propagative functions." Its first principle was that of a judicious in and in breeding, with occasional mingling of foreign blood, as in stock-raising. The second principle adopted was that of "careful selection of individuals for breeding purposes. Genealogies were studied and medical histories compiled." A committee, headed by Noyes, selected the holiest members who were free from physical defects, intellectual and other considerations being given less weight at first, although in later years they received more consideration. The parents were of all ages, but the father was always older than the mother. Some sympathy between the persons mated was always required; and if a proposition for union came from two individuals it was allowed if no objections were found. Noyes held that uncle and niece are as much related as father and daughter, because brothers have identical blood, and that cousins are in the same relation to each other as half brothers. In the Oneida Community uncles and nieces twice paired, and it is noticeable that a considerable proportion of the children had Noyes' blood on one or both sides. The founder himself had nine children in the Community, to which belonged also his brother, his two sisters and their children. As to the care of the children, this belonged exclusively to the mothers for the first nine months, after which for a further nine months they took charge of their offspring at night only.