THE LAW OF HEREDITY ^ 



by a second marriage of some peculiarity belong- 

 ing to a former spouse." ^ Of this I will not 

 speak. It has no special bearing on the present 

 line of thought. 



It is not within the scope of this paper to show 

 that this classification is correct. It rests on an 

 extended induction of facts which has been made 

 with great care by such general investigators as 

 Lamarck, Darwin, Mivart, and Wallace, and such 

 special students of heredity as Lucas, Morel, 

 Ribot, Galton, Elam, and Brooks. 



There are exceptions to this law, but they are 

 neither so numerous nor so inexplicable as are 

 sometimes supposed. 



Spontaneity has undoubted play, and in cases 

 of genius seems to have supreme control; but it 

 is a question whether a more careful induction of 

 facts would not show what are called exceptions, 

 or spontaneous variations from the primitive type, 

 to be in thousands of instances only suppressed 

 or exaggerated heredity. In many other cases 

 they could doubtless be traced to the influence 

 of prenatal environment. It is true that beauti- 

 ful children are sometimes born of ugly parents. 

 So, also, there are on record numerous cases of 

 monstrosities, such as that of Edward Lambert 



^ Heredity, Ribot, p. 147. 



