handsome
figures and striking regularity of features, while in others a less
perfect form, or some peculiar deformity reappears with equal
constancy. A family in Yorkshire is known for several generations to
have been furnished with six fingers and toes. A family possessing the
same peculiarity resides in the valley of the Kennebec, and the same
has reappeared in one or more other families connected with it by
marriage.

The thick upper lip of the imperial house of Austria, introduced by
the marriage of the Emperor Maximillian with Mary of Burgundy, has
been a marked feature in that family for hundreds of years, and is,
visible in their descendants to this day. Equally noticeable is the
"Bourbon nose" in the former reigning family of France. All the Barons
de Vessins had a peculiar mark between their shoulders, and it is said
that by means of it a posthumous son of a late Baron de Vessins was
discovered in a London shoemaker's apprentice. Haller cites the case
of a family where an external tumor was transmitted from father to son
which always swelled when the atmosphere was moist.

A remarkable example of a singular organic peculiarity and of its
transmission to descendants, is furnished in the case of the English
family of "Porcupine men," so called from having all the body except
the head and face, and the soles and palms, covered with hard
dark-colored excrescences of a horny nature. The first of these was
Edward Lambert, born in Suffolk in 1718, and exhibited before the
Royal Society when fourteen years of age. The other children of his
parents were naturally formed; and Edward, aside from this
peculiarity, was good looking and enjoyed good health. He afterward
had six children, all of whom inherited the same formation, as did
also several grand-children.

Numerous instances are on record tending to show that even accidents
do sometimes, although not usually, become hereditary. Blumenbach
mentions the case of a man whose little finger was crushed and twisted
by an accident to his right hand. His sons inherited right hands with
the little finger distorted. A bitch had her hinder parts paralyzed
for some days by a blow. Six of her seven pups were deformed, or so
weak in their hinder parts that they were drowned as useless. A
pregnant cat got her tail injured; in each of her five kittens the
tail was distorted, and had an enlargement or knob near the end of
each. Horses marked during successive generations with re