INFLUENCE OF MALE AND FEMALE PARENT 127 



dififerent period ; and the reason generally assigned 

 is that they are conceived under precisely similar 

 conditions. If so, it follows that the difference exist- 

 ing between ordinary members of a family is due to 

 their being born at considerable intervals of time, and 

 therefore under changed conditions on the part of 

 their parents. At the same time, while physically 

 alike, twins sometimes differ in disposition. The last 

 years of the famous Siamese twins, it is said, were 

 made miserable by the quarrels arising from the 

 different tastes of the brothers, and the opposite views 

 they took of the American war. 



One of the most curious forms of heredity presents 

 itself in the case of a widow who, marrying again, has 

 children by her second husband strongly resembling 

 her first, although the latter may have been dead for 

 years. The fact is unquestionable, and it was long 

 a puzzle to physiologists, who were inclined to believe 

 that the woman's imagination exercised some influ- 

 ence upon her offspring. Goethe adopts this view in 

 his Wahlverwandtschaften, where Charlotte, a virtuous 

 wife, gives birth to a child resembling not her husband, 

 but the captain with whom she is in love, and also 

 Ottilie, her rival in her husband's affections. The 

 idea thus expressed of the influence of the mother's 



