156 EVOLUTION AND GENETICS 



characters are transmitted, and in the folklore, both 

 ancient and modern, of many peoples there are 

 myths that turn on a belief in the inheritance of such 

 characters. Phaethon driving the chariot of the sun 

 over Africa lost control of his father's horses and 

 coming too near the earth, "it is said the people 

 of Aethiopia became black because the blood was 

 called by the heat too suddenly to surface," and they 

 are black to this dav. 



The palaeontologist Cope, an ardent Lamarck- 

 ian, relates a storv "from that keen observer" Pro- 

 fessor Eugene W. Hilgard, describing the origin of 

 the twisted tails of the cats in his neighborhood. A 

 female ("and very prolific") cat when half-grown 

 met with an accident that produced a compound 

 fracture. Her kittens inherited the maternal twist 

 and found favor in the eyes of their master, described 

 as "my Chinaman." Cope also relates the following 

 anecdote on the authority of an educated and reliable 

 breeder of game fowls : "A game-cock, in his second 

 year, lost an eye in a fight. Soon after, and while the 

 wound was very malignant (it never entirely healed) , 

 he w^as turned into a flock of game hens of another 

 strain. He was otherwise healthy and vigorous. A 

 very large proportion of his progeny has the corre- 

 sponding eye defective. . . . The hens afterwards 

 produced normal chickens with another cock. Both 

 strains had been purely bred for ten or more years. 



