418 The Journal of Heredity the professors the choice of who is to be sterilized so soon as he discovers it is proposed to apply this scientific boon to others than the inmates of asylums and penitentiaries. Nor is he likely to yield his procreational rights through persuasion by his well-meaning and superior neighbors. If popular support is to be won for this proposal a new term must be devised that will not suggest the ancient surgical technique. Modern methods accomplish the desired end of rendering the patient incapable of producing children without interfering with the art of engendering them. Perhaps the term barrenize will convey the meaning without arousing apprehension. It should be borne in mind that even though every mental defective, including the grade of moron, submits to sterilization life for the next generation will not be greatly improved. It is not the morons who have created the mischief and misery in the world. Quite the contrary, most of our difficulties are brought about by those whose mental abilities place them above threats of sterilization. The true case for sterilization is that all those who are certain to give birth to mentally defective offspring should be rendered incapable of so doing as a purely economic measure. How to discover who these prospective parents are, in advance of the event, is a problem even greater than how to get the legal authority to sterilize them. In many cases a competent geneticist aided by good family records could predict feeble-minded offspring with certainty and for these cases sterilization is clearly indicated. The few pages of Justice Holme's decision in the case of Buck vs. Bell are much more effective propaganda for sterilization than the 300 pages of undigested and conflicting material contained in this volume. Every feeble-minded birth eliminated is at least an economic gain. Those who strenuously advocate wholesale sterilization of the morons are on treacherous ground and are jeopardizing the progress already made in educating the citizens to approve the sterilization of the feeble-minded. J.H. Kempton U.S. Department of Agriculture [image of bulls] [beginning of new article not continued]