full knowledge of the responsibility we assume.

The risk of marrying a cousin, even a first cousin, is greatly
diminished, provided there is no decided hereditary taint in the family.
And when such hereditary taint does exist, the danger is little more
than in marrying into any other family where it is also found. Indeed, a
certain German author has urged the propriety of such unions, where the
family has traits of mental or physical excellence, as a means of
preserving and developing them!

So far as sterility is concerned, an examination of records shows, that
whereas in the average of unions one women in _eight_ is barren, in
those between relatives but one in _ten_ is so. And as for the early
deaths of children, while, on an average, fifteen children in a hundred
die under seven years, in the families of nearly-related parents but
twelve in a hundred is the mortality as shown by French statistics.

The investigations about idiotic and defective children are by no means
satisfactory, and are considered by some of the most careful writers as
not at all proving a greater tendency to such misfortunes in the
offspring of cousins. Among a thousand idiotic children recently
examined in Paris, not one was descended from a healthy consanguinity.

But as few families are wholly without some lurking predisposition to
disease, it is not well, as a rule, to run the risk of developing this
by too repeated unions. Stock-breeders find that the best specimens of
the lower animals are produced by crossing nearly-related individuals a
certain number of times; but that, carried beyond this, such unions lead
to degeneracy and sterility. Such, also, has been the experience of many
human families.

How slight a cause even of that most insidious disease, consumption,
such marriages are, may be judged from the fact, that of a thousand
cases inquired into by Dr. Edward Smith, in only six was there
consanguinity of parents.

THE MIXTURE OF RACES.

Mankind, say the school geographies, is divided into five races, each
distinguished by its own color. They are the white, the black, the red,
the yellow, and the brown races. In this country, practically, we have
to do with but the white and black races; and the question is constantly
asked, Shall we approve of marriages between them? Shall a white woman
choose a black man to be her husband?

We are at the more pains to answer this, because recently a writer--and
this writer a woman, and