7 



PHYSICAL HEREDITY 



27 



speech and graceful in manner that I ever met. 

 Imagine my amazement when I was shown her 

 mother — a stupid old squaw, who seemed hardly- 

 more than an inert mass of fat. The young 

 woman was the daughter of an officer of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company and of this squaw whom 

 he had married. In any drawing-room in the 

 world the daughter would have attracted atten- 

 tion by her beauty, and she no more resembled 

 her mother than a lily resembles a heap of sand. 

 Heredity affects the size and shape of the body. 

 Frederick William I. had his favourite regiment 

 of giants, whom he would not allow to marry 

 women of stature inferior to their own. Their 

 offspring were gigantic, and their descendants, 

 the most superb specimens of physical manhood 

 in Europe, are still to be seen in various parts 

 of Germany.^ It may be traced in the com- 

 plexion. Plutarch mentions a Greek woman who 

 gave birth to a negro child, and was brought to 

 trial for adultery, but it transpired that she was 

 descended in the fourth degree from an Ethio- 

 pian. The story is officially vouched for of a 

 negro woman who gave birth to a white child, 

 and was terrified at what she supposed would 

 be the inference of her husband, until he told 



1 See Heredity, Ribot, p. 3. 



