II THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 35 
Joseph Banks, published in the “ Philosophical 
Transacticns” for 1813. It appears that one Seth 
Wright, the proprietor of a farm on the banks 
of the Charles River, in Massachusetts, possessed 
a flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary 
kind. In the year 1791, one of the ewes 
_ presented her owner with a male lamb, differing, 
for no assignable reason, from its parents by a 
proportionally long body and short bandy legs, 
whence it was unable to emulate its relatives in 
those sportive leaps over the neighbours’ fences, 
in which they were in the habit of indulging, 
much to the good farmer’s vexation. 
- The second case is that detailed by a no less 
unexceptionable authority than Réaumur, in his 
“Art de faire éclore les Poulets.” A Maltese 
couple, named Kelleia, whose hands and feet were 
constructed upon the ordinary human model, had 
- born to them a son, Gratio, who possessed six per- 
fectly movable fingers on each hand, and six toes, 
not quite so well formed, on each foot. No cause 
could be assigned for the appearance of this unusual 
variety of the human species, 
Two circumstances are well worthy of remark in 
both these cases. In each, the variety appears to 
have arisen in full force, and, as it were, per saltum ; 
a wide and definite difference appearing, at once, 
between the Ancon ram and the ordinary sheep ; 
_ between the six-fingered and six-toed Gratio Kelleia 
and ordinary men, In neither case is it possible 
: D2 
