224 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



sheep of warm climates are covered with hair instead of 

 wool; and the hares and partridges of the latitudes 

 which are long buried in snow become white during the 

 winter months ; add to these the various changes pro- 

 duced in the forms of mankind by their early modes of 

 exertion, or by the diseases occasioned by their habits 

 of life, both of which become hereditary, and that 

 through many generations. Those who labour at the 

 anvil, the oar, or the loom, as well as those who carry 

 sedan chairs or who have been educated to dance upon 

 the rope, are distinguishable by the shape of their limbs ; 

 and the diseases occasioned by intoxication deform the 

 countenance with leprous eruptions, or the body with 

 tumid viscera, or the joints with knots and distortions. 

 " Thirdly, when we enumerate the great changes pro- 

 duced in the species of animals before their nativity, 

 as, for example, when the offspring reproduces the 

 effects produced upon the parent by accident or culti- 

 vation ; or the changes produced by the mixture of 

 species, as in mules ; or the changes produced probably 

 by the exuberance of nourishment supplied to the fetus, 

 as in monstrous births with additional limbs ; many of 

 these enormities of shape are propagated and continued 

 as a variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I 

 have seen a breed of cats with an additional claw on every 

 foot ; of poultry also with an additional claw, and with 

 wings to their feet ; and of others without rumps. Mr. 

 Buffon mentions a breed of dogs without tails which are 

 common at Rome and Naples which he supposes to 

 have been produced by a custom long established of 

 cutting their tails close off. There are many kinds of 



