Vertebrata. Zoological Collectioks. S&l 



with hay, ploughs, carts, wagons, and various agricultural implements, 

 together with numerous others, among which the spinning-wheels of the 

 matrons were conspicuous. Even the sides of the floating mass were 

 loaded with the wheels of the different vehicles, which themselves lay on 

 the roof. Have they told you that these boats contained the little all of 

 each family of venturous emigrants, who, fearful of being discovered by 

 the Indians under night, moved in darkness, groping their way from one 

 part to another of these floating habitations, denying themselves the comfort 

 . of fire or light, lest the foe that watched them from the shore should rush 

 upon them and destroy them ? Have they told you that this boat was used, 

 after the tedious voyage was ended, as the first dwelling of these new 

 settlers ? No, kind reader ; such things have not been related to you before. 

 The travellers who have visited our country have had other objects in view. 

 I shall not describe the many massacres which took place among the 

 different parties of white and red men, as the former moved down the 

 Ohio ; because I have never been very fond of battles, and indeed have 

 always wished that the world were more peaceably inclined than it is ; and 

 shall merely add, that, in one way or other, Kentucky was wrested from the 

 original owners of the soil, jo i^n so mi-^VMi^ i).*3ujp>j ?y«£i r^.a.a uamii ffiil 



Hereditary Transmission of Accidental Characters. (Jn a letter to the Editor.) 

 Sir, — In reading the third Number of the Edinburgh Journal of Natural 

 and Geographical Science, I met with the following remark: — " The 

 characters of an organism are permanent during the operation of the circum- 

 stances, internal and external, which produced them, and no longer ,- " and 

 that *' the original deficiency of caudal vertebrae being the result of mutila- 

 tion, a new operation would be required in every successive generation, to 

 continue the character in the race." If I understand the letter to which 

 this annotation is annexed, and the annotation itself, it would tend to 

 advance, that the offspring of a mutilated animal would not be deficient of 

 those parts that the parent animal had lost. A circumstance has, however, 

 fallen in my way, that proves that the contrary is sometimes the case, though 

 not generally so. My father had some time in his possession a pointer 

 bitch that had lost, through some accidental cause, I believe from being 

 caught in a trap, a portion of the tail, and the whelps, without one exception, 

 came into the world without tails — at least so much so, that they coujd 

 hardly be said to possess more than the rudiments of tails. Only one litter, 

 I believe, came under my observation. These dogs were remarkable for 

 their sagacity, and steadiness in the field. Having been, since that peri€>d, 

 1824-25, on the Continent, I have lost sight of the dogs, and, consequently, 

 cannot advance any thing as to their subsequent peculiarities, or as to the 

 effect the mutilation, in the first generation, might have had upon the third. 

 — I am, &c. , .. . ^.^S» SaUXTMI^ii^jR^i) 



Edinburgh, March 29, 1831. d m^jgyw sdl abiuwoJ bssooiq ' 



[We are very much indebted to Mr Shuttleworth for this interesting fact. 

 To render it available, however, it would be necessary that the characters of 

 the father were given ; and to prove that it was something more than a 

 coincidence, it would be desirable to ascertain what were the characters 

 transmitted to the third generation. Congenital peculiarities are by no 

 means uncommon ; but the question is, " can a merely accidental character 

 become permanent in the race ?" — Ed.] 



On the existence of Peritoneal Canals in the Female Kangaroo, and several 

 other new circumstances connected with the Sexual Organization of the Mar- 

 supial Animals. By M. Geoffroy St Hilaire A female kangaroo having 



died at the Museum of Natural History of Paris, M. St Hilaire seized the 

 opportunity of examining into the structure of the organs of generation, aftd 



