VIII.] SUPPOSED TRANSMISSION OF MUTILATIONS. 447 



the mutilations of certain parts of the human body, as 

 practised by diiferent nations from times immemorial, have, in 

 not a single instance, led to the malformation or reduction of 

 the parts in question. Such hereditary effects have been 

 produced neither by circumcision \ nor the removal of the 

 front teeth, nor the boring of holes in the hps or nose, nor 

 the extraordinary artificial crushing and cripphng of the feet 

 of Chinese women. No child among any of the nations 

 referred to possesses the sHghtest trace of these mutilations 

 when born : they have to be acquired anew in every 

 generation. 



Similar cases can be proved to occur among animals. Pro- 

 fessor Kuhn of Halle pointed out to me that, for practical 

 reasons, the tail in a certain race of sheep has been cut off, 

 during the last hundred years, but that according to Nathusius, 

 a sheep of this race without a tail or with only a rudimentary 

 tail has never been born. This is all the more important 

 because there are other races of sheep in which the short- 

 ness of the tail is a distinguishing peculiarity. Thus the 

 nature of the sheep's tail does not imply that it cannot dis- 

 appear. 



A very good instance is mentioned by Settegast, although 

 perhaps with another object in view. The various species of 

 crows possess stiff bristle-like feathers round the opening of the 

 nostrils and the base of the beak : these are absent only in the 

 rook. The latter, however, possesses them when young, but 

 soon after it has left the nest they are lost and never reappear. 

 The rook digs deep into the earth in searching for food, and in 

 this way the feathers at the base of the beak are rubbed off 

 and can never grow again because of the constant digging. 

 Nevertheless this peculiarity, which has been acquired again 

 and again from times immemorial, has never led to the appear- 

 ance of a newly hatched individual with a bare face. 



Thus there is no reason for the assumption that such a result 

 would occur in the case of the mice even if the experiments had 

 been continued through hundreds or thousands of generations. 



^ It is certainly true that among nations which practise circumcision 

 as a ritual, children are sometimes born with a rudimentary prepuce, 

 but this does not occur more frequently than in other nations in which 

 circumcision is not performed. Rather extensive statistical investiga- 

 tions have led to this result. 



