EUGENICS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1511, 6 August 1912, Page 5

EUGENICS.

• LECTURE BY SIR ROBERT STOUT. A lecture on "Eugenics" was delivered by tho Chief Justice (Sir Robert Stout) ut tlio Sydney Streqt Schoolroom last evening. Professor H. B. Kirk presided, and there were about 50 peoplo present. After a reference to the origin o| tho teaching of tho scicnce of eugenics in the universities, the lecturer nent on to refer to tho work that was to bo done in eradicating factors, which tend to lower our civilisation. Since 18C0,- the influence of heredity had been acknowledged in every phase of life, while during the last 20 years the real development of the subject as an exact science li<ul be(jlin. ! Better plants were now being produced, owing to the acknowledged dnfluenee of heredity, and _ stock-raisers, by paying careful attention to breeding, wero abic to produco better cattle and sheep than hitherto. The speaker then touched on Mendel's law anil tlio influence of the mother, and passed on to speak of families in which the influence of heredity tad been very marked. He instanced the Bach family, the Wordsworth family, tho family of Erasmus Darwin, and the Gregory family, as illustrations of the manner in which ability had descended from generation unto generation. Degeneracy also descended, mid had been clearly observed in the family of n deaf inute, who married a quite normal person. In several succeeding generations deaf mutes had appeared. It was the same with the mentally defective and tubercular families. Thero were other families which tended to extinction, and statistics showed that marriage with heiresses was sometime.? not an advantage, as it often resulted in a childless union. That crime also descended was just as clearly proved, and to his (tho speaker's) own knowledge, ono family in New Zealand had had criminals before tho Courts for the past thirty-six years—ono of them appearing before him yesterday. As with families, so it was with nations. Spain, once a leading nation, had, by the celibacy of its priests (the Church prohibiting marriage), and the exclusion of the intellectuals (bv persecution), lost tlio value of the best strains. Reference was also made to what had happened in tho case of tlio French and the Romans. A point that merited our attention was the decreasing birth-rate among the most ablo of our people. The birth-rate in tho peerage had been decreasing at such a rate during the past century that, if it went on, the abolition of the Houso of Lords would not be necessary. Tho birth-rate of the more fit showed a marked decrease, while that of the less fit had not varied much. In New Zealand there were tlio same problems that had confronted the people of older countries, and if wo wero t.o be a living, active, progressive nation, these problems would have to be grappled with. In the course of his final remarks, Sir Robert Stout touched upon the effects of alcohol and tobacco. At present in a year in New Zealand an average of 430z. of tobacco- was consumed per- capita. Last year 104,000,000 manufactured cigarettes had been sold in tho Dominion,