178 ACQUIRED CHARACTERS SEC. 



was bent towards the radial side between the last and the 

 middle joint, and remained the rest of her life rigid in this 

 position. Dr. Vosseler, who was born two years later, has 

 had the same crookedness of the same finger from his birth, 

 and a brother of his also. The peculiarity was more marked 

 in his youth than it is now. 



The following was related to me by my colleague Professor 

 Dr. v. Saxinger : His father-in-law had a pair of long- tailed 

 pointers, which had once produced a litter of long- tailed pups. 

 In order to obtain short-tailed pups, he had the tails of both 

 shortened. The bitch from that time produced repeatedly short- 

 tailed pups only. As the most careful attention was paid to 

 the parents, no error can be suspected in this case, which, 

 moreover, appears to excite no surprise among dog-breeders. 



Brown -Sequard, 1 as is well known, has shown that 

 epilepsy is inherited by the offspring of guinea-pigs, in which 

 it has been produced by division of the sciatic nerve, or of a 

 portion of the spinal cord. In like manner, a peculiar altera- 

 tion of the shape of the ear, or a partial closing of the eyelids, 

 is inherited by the offspring of animals in which these 

 changes were caused by dividing the sympathetic. Thirdly, 

 exophthalmia was inherited by guinea-pigs in whose parents 

 this protrusion of the eyes had occurred after an injury to 

 the spinal cord, as also ekchymosis and dry gangrene, as well 

 as other trophic disturbances in the ear, due in the parents 

 to an injury to the corpus restiforme. Fifthly, loss of certain 

 phalanges or of whole toes of the hind feet, which had 

 occurred in the parents in consequence of division of the 

 sciatic nerve. Sixthly, diseased condition of the sciatic 

 nerve in the offspring of guinea-pigs in which this nerve was 

 divided, and the occurrence of the phenomena which Brown- 

 Sequard had described as characteristic of the increase and 

 decrease of epilepsy. Further, Brown-Sequard possessed forty 



1 Compt. rend. torn. xciv. p. 697, Paris, 1882. 



