INHERITED INJURIES. 1 1 3 



results in parent and offspring * just as the tend- 

 ency to certain fatal diseases or to suicide may 

 produce similar results in father and son, although 

 the artificially-produced hanging or apoplexy obvi- 

 ously cannot be directly transmitted. That more 

 than one of the offspring was affected does not 

 render the chances against coincidence " almost in- 

 finitely great, " as Darwin mistakenly supposes. It 

 " frequently occurs " that a man's sons or daughters 

 may all exhibit either a latent or a newly-developed 

 congenital peculiarity previously unknown ; 2 and 

 the coincidence may merely be that one of the 

 parents accidentally suffered a similar kind of in- 

 jury a kind of coincidence which must of course 

 occasionally occur, and which may have been 

 partly caused by a latent tendency. The chances 



1 Compare the three cases of crooked fingers given in Variation 

 of Animals and Plants under Domestication, ii. 55, 240. 



2 Ibid., i. 460. Thus, where two brothers married two sisters all 

 the seven children were perfect albinoes, although none of the 

 parents or their relatives were albinoes. In another case the nine 

 children of two sound parents were all born blind (ii. 322). 



