452 SUPPOSED TRANSMISSION OF MUTILATIONS. [MIT. 



susceptibilitj'^to the effects of cold, and that many children have 

 chilblains readily and badly, while others are not affected in 

 this way. Sometimes members of the same family vary in this 

 respect, and the greater or less predisposition towards the 

 formation of chilblains corresponds with a different constitution 

 of the skin, in which some children follow the father and others 

 follow the mother. In Darwin's instance a high degree of 

 susceptibility of the skin of the thumb was obviously innate in 

 the father, and this susceptibility was certainly transmitted, and 

 led to the similar malformation of the thumbs of the children, 

 perhaps very early and after the effect of a comparatively slight 

 degree of cold \ 



The last class of cases which I should wish to consider, refer 

 to observations in which the mutilation of the parent was 

 certain, and in which a malformation similar to the mutilation 

 had appeared in the child, but in which exact investigation 

 shows that the malformations in parent and child do not in 

 reality correspond to each other. 



In this class I include an instance which has only become 

 known during the present year (1888), and which has been 

 observed as exactly as possible by an anthropologist and 

 phj'sician, who has worked up the history of the case. Dr. 

 Emil Schmidt communicated to this year's meeting of the 

 German Anthropologists' Association at Bonn a case which 

 indeed seems at first sight to prove that mutilations of the 

 human ear can be transmitted. As Dr. Schmidt has been 

 kind enough to place at m}^ disposal all the material which 

 he collected upon the subject, I have been able to examine it 



^ This case was not observed by Darwin himself, but was communi- 

 cated to him by J. P. Bishop of Perry, in North America (see ' Kosmos, ' 

 vol. ix. p. 458 . Quite apart from the fact that it is by no means certain 

 whether the father did not already' possess an innate malformation of 

 the thumb, exact data are wanting as to the time during which the 

 thumb was diseased, and as to the time when the malformation of 

 the thumb was first observed in the children and the grandchildren ; 

 whether at birth or at a later period. For a thorough criticism it would 

 also be necessary to have figures of the thumbs. I should not have 

 alluded to this case, because of its incomplete history, if it had not 

 appeared to me to illustrate the ideas mentioned above. Of course I do 

 not maintain that I have suggested the right explanation in this 

 particular case. It is possible that the father possessed an inherent 

 malformation of the thumb which he had forgotten by the time that he 

 came to have children and grandchildren, and was struck by the ab- 

 normality of their thumbs. 



