THE LAW OF HEREDITY 76 



in favour of heredity is proportionately strong. While 

 Buckle was enunciating his fallacy a French savant, 

 Prosper Lucas, was collecting and collating an im- 

 mense body of facts bearing upon and proving the 

 truth of heredity, and his work/ although published 

 forty years ago, remains a text-book of this branch of 

 science. 



Hereditary resemblances extend far beyond the 

 limits of a family circle. There is no difficulty in 

 telling a Jew by his nose, which is as much a matter 

 of heredity as the thick lip of the Imperial house of 

 Austria. It was remarked a few years ago that the 

 sister of one of our English dukes bore a strong re- 

 semblance to her ancestress Nell Gwynne, and there 

 are few families possessing portraits of their members 

 for a number of generations who could not point to 

 similar examples of heredity. ISTot only is every organ 

 and mental faculty transmissible, but the various 

 successive phases of the parent's life, physical or 

 mental, may be repeated in the child. " In the 

 absence of any disturbing agency the son attains 

 maturity, becomes gray or bald, acquires a stoop or a 

 round belly, loses his teeth and memory, and finally 



1 Lucas's TraiU Fhilosophique et Physiologique de VEer6diti 

 Naturelle. 



