han either its father or mother. Or, what is still more astonishing,
it may display some of the characteristics possessed only by a
remote ancestor. This form of inheritance is known by the scientific
term _atavism_, derived from the Latin word _atavus_, meaning an
ancestor. It is curious to note in this connection that sometimes a son
resembles more closely his maternal than his paternal grandsire in some
male attribute,--as a peculiarity of beard, or certain diseases confined
to the male sex. Though the mother cannot possess or exhibit such male
qualities, she has transmitted them through her blood, from her father to
her son.

The fourth variety of inheritance is that in which the child resembles
neither parent, but the first husband of its mother. A woman contracting
a second marriage, transmits to the offspring of that marriage the
peculiarities she has received through the first union. Breeders of
stock know this tendency, and prevent their brood-mares, cows, or sheep
from running with males of an inferior stock. Thus the diseases of a man
may be transmitted to children which are not his own. Even though dead,
he continues to exert an influence over the future offspring of his
wife, by means of the ineffaceable impress he had made in the conjugal
relation upon her whole system, as we have previously mentioned. The
mother finds in the children of her second marriage

'... the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.'

A child may therefore suffer through the operation of this mysterious
and inexorable law, for sins committed not by its own father, but by the
first husband of its mother. What a serious matter, then, is that
relation between the sexes called marriage! How far-reaching are its
responsibilities!

A distinction must here be drawn between hereditary transmission and the
possession of qualities at birth, which have not been the result of any
impression received from the system of father or mother, but due to
mental influences or accidents operating through the mother. A child may
be born idiotic or deformed, not because either parent or one of its
ancestors was thus affected, but from the influence of some severe
mental shock received by the mother during her pregnancy. This subject
of maternal impressions will come up for separate consideration in the
discussion of pregnancy. Again, a child may be epileptic, although there
is no epilepsy in the family, simply because