discarded children, and have been led on by the hopeless dullness and obstinacy of a child with defective brain into cruel treatment of it; and when in some cases the child has died as the natural consequence of its congenital feebleness, the miserable guardians have been found guilty of causing its death. Though little excuse can be made for such miscreants, it is greatly to be desired that the law should step in at an earlier period, and both ensure proper care for the feeble-minded child and remove from unqualified guardians the chance of developing from a state of mere ignorance into one of criminal responsibility. The Government Commission on the Treatment of the Feeble-Minded, which has recently reported, has adopted the view which I have explained in this article as to the origin of feeble-mindedness. A large amount of evidence was taken by the Commission from medical experts and others. A certain number of the witnesses maintained the opinion that feeble-mindedness arises from the action of deficiency of food, of overcrowding, and possibly of drunkenness upon individuals of healthy strain, whose offspring, as a consequence, exhibit feeble-mindedness. Some naturalists, who have committed themselves to a pious belief in what is vaguely called “the transmission of acquired characters,” think themselves called upon to support this opinion, in consequence of a notion that their belief would be rendered more reasonable than it is at present were such an origin of feeble-mindedness demonstrated. Apart from the fact that it is not demonstrated, it is difficult to see how, supposing it were, such a causation could be considered as a transmission of an acquired character. The ill-fed, drunken parent of a feeble-minded child (when discovered and examined) is not found to have “acquired” a condition of the brain agreeing with that of his or her feeble-minded offspring, though sometimes such parent is found to have been himself or herself born with a defective brain. No theory of organic memory, of engrams, inscripts, or transfer of molecular vibrations can enable us to present a plausible mechanical scheme of the way in which the acquired general condition (restricting ourselves to what is new and acquired) of an ill-fed parent can be definitely and specifically re-embodied in his or her offspring, as the peculiar structural condition of brain which is called “feeble-mindedness.” It has not been shown, so far as I am aware, that privation in regard to the food of a parental organism gives rise to new congenital qualities in the reproductive germs which that organism throws off. XXX DEATH-RATES