232 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xn. 



from the same stock. This is strikingly exemplified by the 

 case of Gratio Kelleia, who married a woman with the ordinary 

 pentadactyle extremities, and had by her four children, Salvator, 

 George, Andre, and Marie. Of these children Salvator, the eld 

 est boy, had six fingers and six toes, like his father ; the second 

 and third, also boys, had five fingers and five toes, like their 

 mother, though the hands and feet of George were slightly 

 deformed. The last, a girl, had five fingers and five toes, 

 but the thumbs were slightly deformed. The variety thus 

 reproduced itself purely in the eldest, while the normal 

 type reproduced itself purely in the third, and almost purely 

 in the second and last : so that it would seem, at first, as if 

 the normal type were more powerful than the variety. But 

 all these children grew up and intermarried with normal wives 

 and husband, and then, note what took place : Salvator had four 

 children, three of whom exhibited the hexadactyle members of 

 their grandfather and father, while the youngest had the penta 

 dactyle limbs of the mother and grandmother; so that here, 

 notwithstanding a double pentadactyle dilution of the blood, the 

 hexadactyle variety had the best of it. The same pre-potency 

 of the variety was still more markedly exemplified in the progeny 

 of two of the other children, Marie and George. Marie (whose 

 thumbs only were deformed) gave birth to a boy with six toes, 

 and three other normally formed children ; but George, who was 

 not quite so pure a pentadactyle, begot, first, two girls, each of 

 whom had six fingers and toes ; then a girl with six: fingers on 

 each hand and six toes on the right foot, but only five toes on the 

 left ; and lastly, a boy with only five fingers and toes. In these 

 instances, therefore, the variety, as it were, leaped over one genera 

 tion to reproduce itself in full force in the next. Finally, the 

 purely psntadactyle Andr was the father of many children, not 

 one of whom departed from the normal parental type. 



If a variation which approaches the nature of a monstrosity 

 can strive thus forcibly to reproduce itself, it is not wonderful 

 that less aberrant modifications should tend to be preserved even 

 more strongly ; and the history of the Ancon sheep is, in this 



