EVOLUTION OF THE COLORS OP BIRDS. 33 



susceptible of the criticism of a misinterpretation of the 

 facts. Two only need here be given. '^' ''A. Decandolle 

 describes one such case with the assurance that it is per- 

 fectly true. In the year 1797 a girl twenty-one years 

 old was thrown from a carriage, and in consequence had 

 a scar about five centimeters wide over the left ear and 

 temple which remained without hair. Married in 1799, 

 she bore a son in 1800, in whom the hair was absent 

 from the same area and remained so. The son of the 

 man, born in 1836, had no such defect, but it was pres- 

 ent in his grandson born in 1866, and in 1884 in this 

 last individual when he was eighteen years old the pecu- 

 liarity was disappearing. 



' ' Dr. Meissen of Falkenberg, records in the number 

 of Humboldt for June, 1887, the following case of in- 

 heritance of an injury in his own family: ' When I was 

 seven or eight years old I had the chicken-pox, and I 

 recollect with complete distinctness that I scratched one 

 of the pustules on the right temple in consequence of 

 which I had a small white scar at this spot. Exactly 

 the same scar, which I had of course ceased to think of, 

 on exactly the same spot, was present on my little son, 

 now fifteen months old, when he came into the world. 

 The resemblance is so perfect that it surprises everyone 

 who sees the little mark.' " 



It is unnecessary to multiply examples of reported 

 cases of the inheritance of mutilations. A single trust- 

 worthy instance is sufficient to offset an indefinite 

 amount of evidence to the contrary; more especially 

 when the Neo - Lamarckians themselves assert that 

 such inheritance, if it occurs at all, is abnormal. 

 The explanation given by Weismann of the inheritance 

 of epilepsy in guinea pigs as described in the experi- 



-L c, p. 177. 

 3 



