PROBLEMS OF HEREDITY — APBRT. 399 



for at each generation the women are carrying half of an hereditary 

 element which is exempt from the peculiarity. The extraordinary 

 part of it is that in the cases cited these peculiarities have not dis- 

 appeared sooner. 



On the other hand, it is very natural that some peculiarities should 

 be perpetuated where marriages take place within a limited circle 

 and where the same families constantly intermarry for several gen- 

 erations. This is seen in certain regions, but the facility of inter- 

 communication tends, however, to render such conditions more and 

 more difficult. The populations of certain of our coast islands 

 (Ouessant, Brehat) have for that reason taken on a special type. 

 Nearly all the inhabitants of a valley in the high Alps show what 

 they call sex digitism; that is, an extra finger and toe. Emigration 

 toward the cities has caused these people to disappear. Sometimes 

 certain family groups are found isolated from the rest of the popu- 

 lation not only by geogi'aphical obstacles but by their costumes, 

 manners, and differences of religion. They may begin to take on 

 a certain type even when they are primitively of the same race. 

 Thus the Mohannnedans of China, who are not immigrants, but pure 

 Chinese, have a special type of feature; the Parsees of India, who are 

 of the same Indo-European race as the Brahmans, are of a type very 

 different from them; the Polish Jews, who are not the immigrant 

 Israelites, but wiio are descended from tribes converted during the 

 tenth century of our era. partly to Christianity, partly to Judaism, 

 have ended by separating themselves from their brothers, the Polish 

 Catholics, not only in their physical characteristics and their intel- 

 lectual aptitudes but also by their special disposition to certain dis- 

 eases peculiar to them and which form part of a group of familiar 

 nervous maladies that I will mention in a moment. 



There is a group of families which have intermarried almost ex- 

 clusively for nearly 1,000 years. They are the royal families of 

 Europe. This group presents a very important and particularly in- 

 teresting subject of study on account of the quality of the persons 

 composing it and because of the facility with which their history 

 and even their portraits can be traced back to a very early period. 

 In a highly authoritative work Mons. Galippe has brought together 

 more than 200 portraits of members of the royal houses of France, 

 Spain, Austria, Bavaria, and Savoy, who have united with each other 

 by repeated marriages in nearly every generation. It is easy to see 

 that a family resemblance was very quickly manifested. It is char- 

 acterized principally by two peculiarities, the arched nose, the Bour- 

 bon nose, which is found not alone among the Bourbons, but among 

 the royalty of all the Catholic thrones of Europe, and also the pro- 

 jection of the very heavy lower jaw, the teeth projecting over those 

 of the upper jaw. The portrait of Philip II of Spain at the Louviv 



