184 EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. 
The slit, marked F in the sketch, in the mother’s pinna 
was made subsequent to the accident, so as to enable 
her to wear an ear ornament. 
Reference to the drawings in fig. 96, illustrating the 
development of the pinna, would show that the defect in 
the son may be reasonably attributed to feeble develop- 
ment and incomplete union of the tubercles for the 
lobule and antitragus. 
The facts relative to malformations of the pinna have 
been considered in detail, for they serve to indicate the 
extreme care it is necessary to exercise before we regard 
a defect in the offspring as due to the transmission of an 
acquired defect in the parent. In Schmidt’s example, 
the conclusion at which he arrived, independently of our 
knowledge of the mode by which the pinna is developed, 
is clearly not in accord with the facts of the case, but in 
the example where the child was born with a perforation 
in the lobule, without a knowledge of the embryology of 
the pinna, it would have seemed unreasonable to doubt 
but that we had to deal with the inheritance of an 
acquired defect. 
The facts considered in relation to acquired defects of 
the pinna are of importance in connection with the 
subject of the transmission of mutilations. It appears 
that, immediately on the announcement of the evolution 
theory, those who were antagonistic urged that the 
practice of docking the tails of such animals as horses 
and sheep for so many generations should have produced 
animals with short tails. The Hebrew custom of cir- 
cumcision is as necessary now as in the time of Moses. 
To these may be added the habit of piercing the lobe of 
