PROBLEMS OF HEREDITY APERT. 405 



rate scars '' upon the infants, and likewise cause serious infections of 

 youth, chronic gastroenteritis, " athrepsia," etc. 



These facts show us that heredity only preserves its power when 

 the infant possesses normal conditions for its development identical 

 to those that their parents had. Otherwise the child ceases to re- 

 semble them; he is degenerate. This is opposed to inherited trans- 

 mission. 



This distinction is important, and it becomes much more important 

 to dwell upon it since able authors do not appear to have found it 

 out. I have spoken to you of the excellent and very interesting work 

 of Mons. Galippi. Everything is perfect about it save the title. 

 Mons. Galippi has called it " Heredite des stigmates de degener- 

 escence et les Families souveraines " (Heredity of the stigmas of 

 degeneracy and the royal families). Now he shows us a certain 

 conformation of the face transmitted by heredity, a similarity to one 

 another through many generations of the same line. It is the trans- 

 mission of a family characteristic; it is directly opposite to that 

 which transpires from the " stigmas of degeneracj''." These stigmas 

 momentarily separate some descendant from the normal family 

 type. If the distributing influence which has deviated these subjects 

 from the normal type ceases to act, their descendants return to the 

 normal type. We have seen this in certain groups of peoples sub- 

 jected to defective hygienic conditions; thus the malarial regions 

 of the Bresse, the Dombes, and the Landes were inhabited, before the 

 sanitary improvements were made, by a small-sized race, many of 

 whom had various malformations described under the name of stig- 

 mas of degeneracy (the registers for armj^ service at the time show 

 this). From the time when these countries were made healthy by 

 draining the swamps, the new generations became of normal size 

 and now there are no more exemptions from military service for con- 

 stitutional defect in those cantons than in those places which have 

 never been touched by malaria. These facts are strictly analogous 

 to a very great degree to those seen in certain animal or vegetable 

 species. There exists (I mention this example among a thousand 

 others) a species of crow-foot wdiich, when the seed sprouts in sub- 

 merged land, has lacinated leaves altogether different from the ordi- 

 nary leaves of the plant when grown in dry soil. If made to grow 

 in submerged land for a number of successive generations as long as 

 the experiment permits, and if the seeds are gathered at each genera- 

 tion, those seeds which were sowed in dry land would surely produce 

 full leaves without the number from the lacinated generations having 

 any influence. The lacinated state, then, is a condition of degen- 

 eracy which exists only when a cause provoking it exists. Heredity 

 plays no part in its propagation. It is important to distinguish 

 these facts from facts of heredity or they will become complicated. 



