Most of the mutant types of _Drosophila_ show characteristics that may be regarded as superficial in so far as they do not prevent the animal from living in the protected life that our cultures afford. Were they thrown into open competition with wild forms, or, better said, were they left to shift for themselves under natural conditions, many or most of the types would no doubt soon die out. So far as we can see, there is no reason to suppose that the mutations which can be described as superficial are disproportionally more likely to occur than others. Of course, superficial mutations are more likely to survive and hence to be seen; while if mutations took place in important organs some of them would be expected to affect injuriously parts essential to the life of the individual and in consequence such an individual perishes. The "lethal factors" of _Drosophila_ may be supposed to be mutations of some such nature; but as yet we have not studied this side of the question sufficiently, and this supposed method of action of the lethals is purely speculative. Whatever the nature of the lethals' action, it can be shown that from among the offspring obtained from certain stocks expected classes are missing, and the absence of these classes can be accounted for on the assumption that there are present mutant factors that follow the Mendelian rule of segregation and which show normal linkage to other factors, but whose only recognizable difference from the normal is the death of those individuals which receive them. The numerical results can be handled in precisely the same way as are other linkage results. There are some general relations that concern the lethals that may be mentioned here, while the details are left for the special part or are found in the special papers dealing with these lethals. A factor of this kind carried by the X chromosome would be transmitted in the female line because the female, having two X chromosomes, would have one of them with the normal allelomorph (dominant) of the lethal factor carried by the other X chromosome. Half of her sons would get one of her X's, the other half the other. Those sons that get the lethal X will die, since the male having only one X lacks the power of containing both the lethal and its normal allelomorph. The other half of the sons will survive, but will not transmit the lethal factor. In all lethal stocks there are only half as many sons as daughters. The heterozygous lethal-bearing female, fertilized by a normal male, will give rise to two kinds of daughters; one normal in both X's, the other with a normal X and a lethal-bearing X chromosome. The former are always normal in behavior, and the latter repeat in their descendants the 2:1 sex-ratio.