HEREDITARY TRAITS. 



29 



tween the human race and a race of animals under 

 domestication, in this particular respect, is found 

 in the case of the Kelleia family on the one 

 hand, and that of the ancon or otter sheep on 

 the other. 



The former case is described by Reaumur. 

 A Maltese couple named Kelleia, whose hands 

 and feet were of the ordinary type, had a son 

 Gratio who had six movable fingers on each 

 hand, and six somewhat less perfect toes on each 

 foot. Gratio Kelleia married a woman possess- 

 ing only the ordinary number of fingers and toes. 

 There were four children of this marriage — Sal- 

 vator, George, Andre, and Marie. Salvator had j 

 six fingers and six toes like the father ; George 

 and Andre had each five fingers and five toes like 

 the mother, but the hands and feet of George 

 were slightly deformed ; Marie had five fingers 

 and five loes, but her thumbs were slightly de- 

 formed. All four children grew up, and married 

 folk with the ordinary number of fingers and 

 toes. The children of Andre alone (who were 

 many) were without exception of the normal type, 

 like their father. The children of Salvator, who 

 alone were six-fingered and six-toed like Gratio, 

 the grandfather, were four in number ; three of 

 them resembled the father, while the other — the 

 youngest — was of the normal type like his moth- 

 er and grandmother. As these four children 

 were the descendants of four grandparents, of 

 whom one only was hexadactylic, we see that the 

 variety had been strong enough in their case to 

 overcome the normal type in threefold greater 

 strength. But the strangest part of the story 

 is that relating to George and Marie. George, 

 who was a pentadactyle, though somewhat de- 

 formed about the hands and feet, was the father 

 of four children : first two girls, both purely 

 hexadactylic ; next a girl, hexadactylic on the 

 right side of the body, and pentadactylic on the 

 left side ; and lastly a boy, purely pentadactylic. 

 Marie, a pentadactyle with deformed thumbs, 

 gave birth to a boy with six toes, and three nor- 

 mally-formed children. It will be seen, however, 

 that the normal type showed itself in greater 

 force than the variety in the third generation 

 from Gratio ; for while one child of Salvator's, 

 one of George's, three of Marie's, and all of An- 

 dre's (some seven or eight) were of the normal 

 type — twelve or thirteen in all — only five, viz., 

 three of Salvato.'s and two of George's, present- 

 ed the variety purely. Three others were more 

 or less abnormally formed in fingers and toes ; 

 but, even counting these, the influence of the va- 

 riety was shown only in eight of the grandchil- 



dren of Gratio, whereas twelve or thirteen were 

 of the normal type. 



The story of the ancon or otter sheep, as 

 narrated by Colonel David Humphreys, in a let- 

 ter to Sir Joseph Banks published in the " Philo- 

 sophical Transactions " for 1813, has been thus 

 abridged by Huxley : " It appears that one Seth 

 Wright, the proprietor of a farm on the banks 

 of the Charles River, in Massachusetts, possessed 

 a flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary 

 kind. In the year 1791 one of the ewe3 presented 

 her owner with a male lamb differing, for no as- 

 signable reason, from its parents by a dispropor- 

 tionately long body and short, bandy legs, wheDce 

 it was unable to emulate its relatives in those 

 sportive leaps over the neighbors' fences in which 

 they were in the habit of indulging, much to the 

 good farmer's vexation. With the ' cuteness' 

 characteristic of their nation, the neighbors of 

 the Massachusetts farmer imagined it would be 

 an excellent thing if all his sheep were imbued 

 with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Na- 

 ture upon the newly-arrived ram ; and they ad- 

 vised Wright to kill the old patriarch of his fold 

 and install the new ancon ram in his place. The 

 result justified their sagacious anticipations. . . . 

 The young lambs were almost always either pure 

 ancons or pure ordinary sheep. But, when suffi- 

 cient ancon sheep were obtained to interbreed 

 with one another, it was found that the offspring 

 were always pure ancon. Colonel Humphreys, 

 in fact, states that he was acquainted with only 

 ' one questionable case of a contrary nature.' By 

 taking care to select ancons of both sexes for 

 breeding from, it thus became easy to establish 

 an exceedingly well-marked race, so peculiar that, 

 even when herded with other sheep, it was noted 

 that the ancons kept together. And there is ev- 

 ery reason to believe that the existence of this 

 breed might have been indefinitely protracted ; 

 but the introduction of the Merino sheep — which 

 were not only very superior to the ancons in 

 wool and meat, but quite as quiet and orderly — 

 led to the complete neglect of the new breed, so 

 that in 1813 Colonel Humphreys found it difficult 

 to obtain the specimen whose skeleton was pre- 

 sented to Sir Joseph Banks. We believe that for 

 many years no remnant of it has existed in the 

 United States." 



It is easy, as Huxley remarks, to understand 

 why, whereas Gratio Kelleia did not become the 

 ancestor of a race of six-fingered and six-toed men, 

 Seth Wright's ancon ram became a nation of long- 

 bodied, short-legged sheep. If the purely hexa- 

 dactylic descendants of Gratio Kelleia, and all 



