THE SUPPOSED TRANSMISSION OF MUTILATIONS. 427 



strosities which have arisen from unknown changes in the germ. 

 Similar monstrosities have been known for a long- time, and no one 

 has ever doubted that they can be transmitted. 



It would be equally justifiable to derive the cats with extra toes 

 from an ancestor of which the toes had been trodden upon, as to 

 derive the tailless cats of the Isle of Man from an ancestor of 

 which the tail had been cut off by a cart passing over it, and thus 

 to regard the existence of the race as a proof of the transmission of 

 mutilations. 



But even if it were certain that the tail of the mother cat had 

 been mutilated, such a fact would not necessarily prove that the 

 rudimentary tails of the offspring were due to transmission from 

 the mother : they might have been transmitted from the unknown 

 father. This is probably not the case with Dr. Zacharias' cat, for 

 tailless kittens occurred in several families produced by the same 

 mother; but in other cases the possibility of the possession of 

 innate taillessness by the father must be taken into account. The 

 following case is, in this respect, very instructive. 



Last summer, my friend, Prof. Schottelius, of Freiburg, brought 

 me a kitten with an innate rudimentary tail, which he had 

 accidentally discovered as one of a family of kittens at Waldkirch, 

 a small town in the southern part of the Black Forest. The 

 mother of the kitten possessed a perfectly normal tail ; the father 

 could not be identified. 



A closer investigation resulted in the following rather un- 

 expected discovery. For some years past, tailless kittens have 

 frequently appeared in the families of many different mother cats 

 at Waldkirch, and this fact is explained in the following manner. 



are given. Additional generations and many more families have been since observed, 

 and an account of these observations will shortly be published in the same paper. 

 The breed originally came from Bristol. In the observations recorded, the ab- 

 normality of the offspring is an indication of the hereditary strength of the female 

 parents, while the degree of normality is a similar test of heredity through the male 

 parents; for the female parents were always abnormal, the male parents always 

 normal. The most abnormal kitten observed possessed seven toes on each forefoot, 

 seven toes on the right hind foot (three more than the normal number), and six 

 on the left hind foot. Kittens with seven toes on the forefeet and six on the hind 

 were comparatively common, and all intermediate conditions between this and the 

 normal were of frequent occurrence. Cats with extra toes are, I think, not uncom- 

 mon in most countries, and the fact that the peculiarity is transmitted is also well 

 known. The object of the investigation alluded to was to observe the transmission 

 systematically through many generations. E. B. P.] 



