It has been shown in letters to the Times that,
so far as the statistics can be trusted, the marriage of deaf-mutes very rarely indeed results in offspring who have the same congenital de- fect; while Mr. Dalby, the aurist, reports it as his own observa- tion that congenital deafness is very much commoner among the offspring of marriages between cousins, than even among the offspring of marriages between persons unrelated to each other of whom either one or both are congenitally deaf. If this can be amply supported on scientific evidence, it would certainly go to prove that even a striking coincidence of constitutional defects arising from different causes has but little tendency to reproduce itself in the offspring; while a weakness of constitu- tion which is due in both parents to one and the same origin, though manifesting itself in no such coincidence of defect, results in unexpected deficiencies. But are the statistics on. these subjects really adequate and accurate?
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