nditions or habits, that any modification in the offspring
ensues. The son of an old soldier learns his drill no more quickly than
the son of an artisan. We must therefore come to the conclusion with Mr.
Galton, that to a great extent our own embryos have sprung immediately
from the embryos whence our parents were developed, and these from the
embryos of their parents, and so on for ever. Hence we are still
barbarians in our nature. We show it in a thousand ways. Children, who
love to dig and play in the dirt, have inherited that instinct from
untold generations of ancestors. Our remote forefathers were barbarians,
who dug with their nails to get at the roots on which they lived. The
delicately-reared child reverts to primeval habits. In like manner, the
silk-haired, parlor-nurtured spaniel springs from the caressing arms of
its mistress, to revel in the filth of the roadside. It is the breaking
out of inherited instinct.

TRANSMISSION OF DISEASE.

Perhaps the most important part of the subject of inheritance, is that
which remains for us to consider in relation to the transmission of
disease, or of a predisposition to it.

Consumption,--that dread foe of modern life,--is the most frequently
encountered of all affections as the result of inherited predisposition.
Indeed some of the most eminent physicians have believed it is never
produced in any other way. Heart disease, disease of the throat,
excessive obesity, affections of the skin, asthma, disorders of the
brain and nervous system, gout, rheumatism, and cancer, are all
hereditary. A tendency to bleed frequently, profusely and
uncontrollably, from trifling wounds, is often met with as a family
affection.

The inheritance of diseased conditions is also _influenced by the sex_.
A parent may transmit disease exclusively to children of the same sex,
or exclusively to those of the opposite sex. Thus, a horn-like
projection on the skin peculiar to the Lambert family was transmitted
from the father to his sons and grandsons alone. So mothers have through
several generations transmitted to their daughters alone supernumerary
fingers, color-blindness, and other deformities and diseases. As a
general rule, any disease acquired during the life of either parent,
strongly tends to be inherited by the offspring of the same sex rather
than the opposite. We have spoken of the apparently reverse tendency in
regard to the transmission of genius and talent.

ARE MUTILATIONS