INTERMARRIAGE. The intc.rmarriage or intercourse of near relatives has been universally believed to entail degeneration upon the off spring. and the act has been condemned and pro hibited. The physical and mental de basement of the ragots of the Pyrenees, of the Marrons of Auvercme, of the Sarrasins of Dauphin.% of the Cretins of the Alps, and the gradual deterioration of the slave population of America, have peen attributed to consanguineous alliances. More recently. the same opinion has been supported by the history of deaftmitism and of idiocy. Of 235 deaf and (1111111) children whose parentage could be traced. 70. or nearly 30 per vent., were the offspring of the intermarriage of blood relations. But in opposition to. and ap parently destructive of such an hypothesis, may be adduced the unimpaired condition and sym metry of the Jews, of the small Mohammedan communities in India, of the isolated tribes in North America, among whom the repeated inter marriage of near relatives is compulsory. Alore over, this opinion does not hold in the analogous cases among the inferior animals. (fee linEEos
AND IltaTtuNc.) Darwin states that the first and fundamental law of heredity is that every attribute of the parents tends to be inherited by the offspring. Opposing influences counteract the tendency. If two brothers inherit strongly the characters of one of their parents, and if each transmits these characters strongly to his children, the cousins thus produced will have not only a elose relationship of blood, but a close similarity of physiological characters. and if they marry, their offspring will be likely to be imper fect (Mercier). Insanity follows consanguineous marriages wher the contracting parties inherit the same tendencies of a neurotic nature. If one of two brothers shows a reversion to a maternal ancestor, and the other the father's char acter strongly, the first cousins springing from such brothers will have considerable physiological dissimilarity, and if these cousins marry their offspring ate likely to be well developed. See CONSANGUINITY.