(_b_) It is still undecided whether alcohol is a specific protoplasmic poison; but it is an indisputable fact that, among the offspring of those addicted to alcohol, the ill effects of the parental alcoholism may be displayed in other ways besides by the appearance of alcoholic tendencies in the next generation. The children of drunkards tend to be cruel, dissolute, dirty in their habits, hypersensitive, or themselves inclined to drink; and in any or all of these ways they may be a danger to society. For example, it has been found in wine-growing districts that the children born in any one year are stupider in proportion as the vintage of their birth-year was a good one. Often the effects of alcohol are better marked in the children of alcoholics than in the parents themselves. When both parents are drunkards, the children are apt to suffer from moral insanity; and the offspring of drunkards tend to become criminals. Children whose parents were in a state of actual inebriety at the time of procreation will most probably be feeble-minded. Since alcohol increases sexual desire, even though it diminishes sexual potency, alcoholics tend to procreate more children than non-alcoholics; but any advantage that might ensue from the greater quantity of the offspring is more than outbalanced by their inferior quality. And because alcohol strengthens sexual desire, the number of alcoholics who were procreated by parents in a state of inebriety is considerable. Some experts contend that if the father is a drinker, the daughter is unable to suckle her own children. (_c_) What has been said regarding alcoholism applies also to some extent to morphinism. (_d_) Tuberculosis is not directly transmitted by inheritance. But the predisposition to tuberculosis is so transmitted; that is to say, it is regarded as unquestionable that an inferior power of resistance to the virus of tubercle passes by inheritance from parent to offspring. Those predisposed to tuberculosis tend to have a vigorous sexual impulse, and exhibit a high degree of fertility. (_e_) Gonorrhœa lessens or destroys fertility to such an extent that, in from 40 to 50 per cent. of childless marriages, the sterility is referable to gonorrhœal infection. Gonorrhœa, _i.e._ specific gonorrhœal urethritis or vaginitis, is not itself transmissible by inheritance; but gonorrhœa in the parent may lead to certain diseases in the offspring, and the most important of these is ophthalmia of the new-born--the commonest cause of blindness. (_f_) Syphilis is in most cases transmissible by inheritance. The children of syphilitic parents are commonly feeble-minded or idiotic; or bodily, mentally, or morally degenerate; and they possess an inferior power of resistance to diseases.