INTERMARRIAGE. The intermarriage or intercourse of near relatives has been uni versally believed to entail degeneration upon the offspring, and the act has been con demned and prohibited. The physical deformity and mental debasement of the Cagots of the Pyrenees, of the Macrons of Auvergne, of the Sarrasins of Dauphine, of the Cretins of the Alps, and the gradual deterioration of the slave population of America, have been attributed to the consanguineous alliances which are unavoidable among these unfortu nate peoples. More recently, the same opinion has been supported by the history of deaf mutism and of idiocy. Of 235 deaf and dumb children whose parentage could be traced, 70, or nearly 80 per cent, were the offspring of the intermarriage of blood-relations. But in opposition to, and apparently destructive of such an hypothesis, may be adduced the unimpaired condition and symmetry of the Jews, of the small Mohammedan communi ties in India, of the isolated tribes in North America, whom the repeated inter marriage of near relatives is compulsory. Moreover, this opinion does not hold in. the analogous cases inferior animals, as the Arabs can trace the pedigree of their most valuable horses to the time of Mohammed, whilst they avoid all crossing; the stud books in this country record the ascendants of racers for 200 years, and show the perpetu ation of the qualities of strength, and weight, and fleentbss by propagation within the endowed family, both Eclipse and Childers being descended from a horse the offspring, of a parent and foal; and the descendants, again, of these horses, which still maintain the highest estimation, afford many instances of very close breeding; and lastly, the Durham ox and the Ditchely sheep were the result and triumph of breeding in and in.
The present state of the controversy, as it has been recently conducted in France, may be summed up in time proposition that consanguineous alliances are not necessarily hurt• ful to the offspring,. provided the parents be healthy and robust; but the observations of Devay and Bemiss in America show that such generalizations should be received with caution. It should be added that even were it established that mental disease generally followed such unions, the transmission might depend rather upon the increased certainty of reproducing hereditary tendencies than upon the violation of any physiological law. —Steinau, Essay on Hereditary Li eases and Intermarriage; Devay, Du Danger des Mar lages Consanguine (1802); I3oudiii, Dangers des Unions Consanguine, etc. ; Annales d'Hygiene Publique (1862); Ribot's Herddite (1874); etc.