cousins, sons of the latter, two were half idiots, one a complete idiot,
and the other a lunatic.

There is an agricultural community of about 4000 in the rich and fertile
district in the valley of Artena, in Italy, who have been thieves,
brigands, and assassins since 1155 A.D. They were outlawed by Pope Paul
IV., in 1557, but they still live and flourish in their crime, the
victims of a criminal inheritance. The ratio of homicides in Italy and
Artena is as 9 to 61; of assault and battery as 34 to 205; of highway
robbery as 3 to 145; of theft as 47 to 111. Professor Pellman, of Bonn
University, has traced the careers of a large number of defectives, and
shown their cost to the State. Take this example:--A woman who was a
thief, a drunkard, and a tramp for forty years of her life, had 834
descendants, 709 of whom were traced; 106 were born out of wedlock, 142
were beggars, and 64 more lived on charity. Of the women, 181 lived
disreputable lives. There were in the family 76 convicts, 7 of whom were
convicted of murder. In 75 years, this family cost their country in
almshouses, trials, courts, prisons, and correctional establishments
about £250,000. The injury inflicted by this one family on person and
property was simply incalculable.

In New Zealand, the ratio of those dependent upon the State, or on
public or private support, has gone up from 16.86 per thousand of
population, over 15 years of age in 1878, to 23.01 in 1901. The ratio of
defectives, including deaf and dumb, blind, lunatics, epileptics,
paralytics, crippled and deformed, debilitated and infirm, has gone up
from 5.4 per thousand, over fifteen years, in 1874, to 11.4 in 1896,
declining slightly to 10.29 in 1901. The ratio of lunatics has gone up
from 1.9, in 1874, to 3.4 in 1901. This is the period of the most rapid
and persistent decline in the New Zealand birth-rate; and, coincident