970 OF GENERATION. 



shown by the fusion of the characters of the parents, which is exhibited by hy- 

 brids between distinct species or strongly-marked varieties among the lower 

 animals, such as the Horse and Ass, the Lion and Tiger, or the various breeds 

 of Dogs; or in the offspring of parents belonging to two strongly-contrasted Races 

 of Men, such as the European, on the one hand, and the Negro or American 

 Indian on the other. But it is rare to meet with instances, even when the dif- 

 ferences between the parents are far less strongly marked, in which some dis- 

 tinctive traits of both may not be readily traced; these traits showing themselves 

 in peculiarities of manner and gesture, in tendencies* of thought or feeling, in 

 proneness to particular constitutional disorders, &c., even where there is no per- 

 sonal resemblance, and where there has been no possibility that these peculiari- 

 ties should have been gained by imitation. And it is well known, too, that such 

 peculiarities will often reappear in a subsequent generation, after being appa- 

 rently extinct; as if the agency which produced them had been overpowered for 

 a time by some stronger influence, but had subsequently been left free to operate. 

 This phenomenon is known as atavism. The influence of particular perversions 

 of the regular nutritive operations, brought about by causes to which the parents 

 have been exposed, is often manifested in the offspring ; thus we find gout, scro- 

 fula, syphilis, &c., hereditarily transmitted; and the children of habitual drunk- 

 ards are distinguished by their tendency to Idiocy and Insanity. 1 There seems 

 good reason to believe, moreover, that the attributes of the germ are in great 

 degree dependent, not merely upon the habitual conditions of the parents which 

 have furnished its original components, but even upon the condition in which 

 those parents may be at the time of sexual congress. Of this we have a remark- 

 able proof in the phenomenon well known to breeders of animals, that a strong 

 mental impression made upon the female by a particular male will give the off- 

 spring a resemblance to him even though she has had no sexual intercourse with 

 him ; a circumstance for which there is no difficulty in accounting, on the hypo- 

 thesis already put forth regarding the dynamical relation of Mental states to the 

 Organic processes ( 945). And there is no improbability, therefore, in the idea 

 that the offspring of parents ordinarily healthy and temperate, but begotten in 

 a fit of intoxication on both sides, would be likely to suffer permanently from the 

 abrogation of the reason, which they have temporarily brought upon themselves. 3 

 There is another class of facts which seems referable to the same category, that, 

 namely, which exhibits the influence of a male parent upon the subsequent 

 offspring of a different parentage ; as in the well-known case of the transmission 

 of the Quagga-marks to a succession of colts both whose parents were of the 

 species Horse, the mare having been once impregnated by the Quagga male ; 3 

 and in the not unfrequent occurrence of a similar phenomenon in the Human 

 species, as when a widow who marries a second time bears children strongly re- 

 sembling her first husband. Some of these cases appear referable to the strong 

 mental impression left by the first male parent upon the female ; but there are 

 others which seem to render it more likely that the blood of the female has 

 imbibed from that of the fo3tus, through the placental circulation, some of the 

 attributes which the latter has derived from its male parent ; and that the female 

 may communicate these, with those proper to herself, to the subsequent offspring 

 of a different male parentage. 4 On the whole, then, we seem entitled to con- 



1 See the Author's "Prize Essay on Alcoholic Liquors," $ 36, Am. Ed., and Dr. Howe's 

 " Report on Idiocy in Massachusetts," in the Am. Journ. oi'Mecl. Sci., April, 1849. 



2 See a case of this kind related by Mr. G. Combe, in the "Phrenological Journal," 

 vol. viii. p. 471.' 



3 " Philosophical Transactions," 1821. 



4 See an interesting discussion of this question, by Dr. Alex. Harvey, in the "Edinb. 

 Monthly Journ.," Oct. 1849, and Oct. and Nov. 1850; and in his pamphlet "On a Re- 

 markable Effect of Cross-breeding," Edinb. 1851. 



