Many similar cases of the unusual frequency of individuals of musical or religious ability in certain families have been published by Galton and are well known. "As long as ability marries ability, a large proportion of able offspring is a certainty, and ability is a more valuable heirloom in a family than mere material wealth, which, moreover, will follow ability sooner or later." We might contrast with such families as have been recorded in the three preceding figures some well-known families at the other pole of society. As an interesting example we have the family described by Poellmann. This was established by two daughters of a woman drunkard who in five or six generations produced all told 834 descendants. The histories of 709 of these are known. Of the 709, 107 were of illegitimate birth; 64 were inmates of almshouses; 162 were professional beggars; 164 were prostitutes and 17 procurers; 76 had served sentences in prison aggregating 116 years; 7 were condemned for murder. This family is still a fertile one and the cost to the State, i. e., the taxpayers, already a million and a quarter dollars, is still increasing. [Illustration: FIG. 28.--History (condensed and incomplete) of three markedly able families. (From Whetham.)] One of the best known families of this type is the so-called "Jukes" family of New York State so carefully investigated by Dugdale. This family is traced from the five daughters of a lazy and irresponsible fisherman born in 1720. In five generations this family numbered about 1,200 persons, including nearly 200 who married into it. The histories of 540 of these are well known and about 500 more are partly known. This family history was easier to follow than are some others because there was very little marriage with the foreign-born--"a distinctively American family." Of these 1,200 idle, ignorant, lewd, vicious, pauper, diseased, imbecile, insane, and criminal specimens of humanity, about 300 died in infancy. Of the remaining 900, 310 were professional paupers in almshouses a total of 2,300 years (at whose expense?); 440 were physically wrecked by their own diseased wickedness; more than half of the women were prostitutes; 130 were convicted criminals; 60 were habitual thieves; 7 were murderers. Not one had even a common school education. Only 20 learned a trade, and 10 of these learned it in State prison! They have cost the State over a million and a quarter dollars, and the cost is still going on. Who pays this bill? What right had an intelligent and humane society to allow these poor unfortunates to be born into the kind of lives they had to lead, not by choice but by the disadvantage of birth? Darwin wrote long ago "... except in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." [Illustration: FIG. 29.--History of _Die Familie Zero_. (Condensed from Jörger's data, partly after Davenport.)]