2i 8 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



nature have been produced in the fruit of one species of 

 melon by fertilising the flowers with pollen of a different 

 species, and thus producing, through the operation of the 

 law of likeness, a blending of the character of the two species. 

 Equally certain as regards their effects on the young forms of 

 animals, are the effects of the transmission of influences or 

 qualities impressed on the parents. The birth of a hybrid 

 foal, half quagga, half horse, from a mare, has been a suf- 

 ficient influence to transmit to the subsequent and pure 

 progeny of the mother the banded stripes or markings of 

 the quagga ; the influence of the first male parent and off- 

 spring extending, as it were, to the unconnected and 

 succeeding progeny. 



The case of the human subject presents no exceptions to 

 the laws of heredity and of hereditary influences, since the 

 common experience of everyday life familiarises us with 

 the transmission of the constitution of body and mind from 

 parent to child ; whilst the careful investigation of the family 

 history of noted artists, sculptors, poets, musicians, and men 

 of science clearly proves that the qualities for which they are 

 or were distinguished have, in most cases, been transmitted 

 to them as a natural legacy and inheritance, so fully does 

 science corroborate the popular saying, that qualities of body 

 and mind " run in the blood." 



A notable case of the operation of the law of likeness in 

 perpetuating a singular condition of body is afforded by the 

 history of the Lambert family. Edward Lambert was ex- 

 hibited in 1731, at the age of fourteen, before the Royal 

 Society of London, on account of the peculiar condition of 

 his skin, which was covered with horny scales ; these append- 

 ages, in their most typical development, according to one 

 account, " looking and rustling like the bristles or quills of a 

 hedgehog shorn off within an inch of the skin." In 1757 

 the " porcupine man," as Lambert was called, again exhibited 

 himself in London. He had in the interim suffered from 

 small-pox ; the disease having had the effect of temporarily 

 destroying the roughened skin, which, however, reappeared 



