The term “Jukes” is a sort of pseudonym very considerately intended to cloak the identity of members of the family who may now be engaged in honest pursuits. The family had its origin in the northern part of the State of New York, and has rendered the place notorious by the unbroken chain of crime which, link after link, binds the jail-bird of to-day with the jolly and easy-living “Max” of a century ago, who drank well, hunted well, and ended his days in the quiet enjoyment of animal peace. He certainly was more intent on hospitable cares and the gratification of his passing desires than on the welfare of his progeny; for no man ever left behind him a more serried array of criminal descendants whose name has become the synonym of every iniquity the tongue can utter or the mind conceive. This man had two sons, married to two out of six sisters whose reputation before marriage was bad. The eldest of the sisters is called “Ada Juke” for convenience’ sake, though in the county where the family lived her memory is unpleasantly embalmed as “Margaret, the mother of criminals.” Ada had given birth before her marriage to a male child, who was the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of the distinctively criminal line of descendants. She afterwards married, and thus commingled in her person two generations exhibiting characteristics essentially peculiar to each, though they often bear leading features of resemblance. The sisters “Delia” and “Effie” married the two sons of Max, and in this way, though somewhat obscurely, Mr. Dugdale connects Max with the most criminal branch of the Jukes. We say somewhat obscurely; for the reader is first inclined to believe that Ada was married to one of Max’s sons, till on chart No. iv., page 49, he quite casually lights on the remark “Effie Juke married X——, brother to the man who married Delia Juke, and son of Max.” While acknowledging the inherent difficulty of a lucid arrangement of facts so complicated and bearing such manifold relations, we believe that a little more fulness of statement would lead to at least an easier understanding of Mr. Dugdale’s work. “Effie” became, through her marriage with the second son of Max, the ancestress of one of the distinctively pauperized branches of the family. The progeny of Delia inclined more to crime, and Ada thus became the parent stem whence both the criminal and pauperized army of the “Jukes” mainly sprang; for it is a circumstance deserving notice that, whereas the offspring of “Ada” before marriage founded the criminal line of the family, her offspring after marriage inclined rather to pauperism than to crime. So likewise in the case of “Effie,” whose known offspring was the result of marriage; we find few criminals, but nearly all paupers, among her descendants.