494 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Nov. 



cleaned and assorted according to size. I wish 

 all interested in such matters could stand by and 

 see how quietly, easily and effectively all these 

 things are accomplished. 



The patentee, Mr. Nutting, has, I understand, 

 labored for years in perfecting and bringing out 

 this mill, which he now designs to ofTer to the 

 country, and all thinking men will, I am sure, 

 bespeak for him a remuneration commensurate 

 with the vast benefit which his invention shall 

 confer. E. Ingham. 



Springfield, Vt., Sept. 4. 



Remarks. — We have seen this fanning mill in 

 operation several times, and believe it to l)e the 

 best fanning and separating mill ever invented. 



HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION". 



Why should one doubt that cranial peculiari- 

 ties, accidentally or artificially produced, may be 

 transmitted, inasmuch as we see numerous ex- 

 amples of the transmission of other physical and 

 artificially produced peculiarities, in man and the 

 lower animals ? All parts of the animal body 

 are alike subject to the laws of growth and im- 

 pression during utero-gestation. If accidental 

 or artificial peculiarities of limbs, the skin, etc., 

 are occasionally transmitted, why may not those 

 cf the head ? Blumenbach relates the case of a 

 man whose little finger was crushed and twisted 

 by an accident to his right hand, and his sons in- 

 herited right hands with little fingers distorted. 

 A writer in the Western Bevieio, affirms that 

 horses marked during successive generations, 

 with a red-hot iron in the same place, transmit 

 the visible traces of such marks to their colts. A 

 dog had her hinder parts paralyzed for several 

 days by a blow ; six of her seven pups were de- 

 formed or excessively weak in their hinder parts, 

 and were drowned as useless. Burdach cites the 

 case of a woman who nearly died from hemor- 

 rhage after blood-letting ; her daughter was so 

 sensitive that a violent hemorrhage would follow 

 even a trifling scratch. She, in turn, transmitted 

 this peculiarity to her son. A man had the hab- 

 it of sleeping on his back with his right leg 

 crossed over the left ; one of his danghters also 

 showed the same peculiarity from her birth, con- 

 stantly assuming it in her cradle, in spite of the 

 swathing. A superb stallion, son of Le Glori- 

 eux, who came from the Pompadour stables, be- 

 came blind from disease ; all his colts became 

 blind before they were three years old. Manper- 

 tius mentions a phenomenon which has been ob- 

 served elsewhere by others ; he assures us "that 

 there were two families in Germany, who have 

 been distinguished for several generations by six 

 •fingers on each hand, and the same number of 

 toes on each foot." George Combe relates the 

 following : "A man's first child was of sound 

 mind ; afterwards he had a fall from his horse, 

 by which his head was much injured. His next 

 two children proved to be idiots. After this he 

 was trepanned, and had other children, and they 

 turned out to l3e of sound mind." Venette knew 

 a woman who limped with her right leg ; her 

 daughter was born with the same defect in her 

 right leg. In the civilized countries the constant 

 habit of milkins: cows has enlarged the udder 



greatly beyond its natural size, and so changed 

 the secretions that the supply does not cease 

 when the calf is removed. In Columbia, where 

 circumstances are entirely different, nature shows 

 a strong tendency to assume its original type ; a 

 cow gives milk there only while the calf is with 

 her. M. Danney made experiments during ten 

 years with rabbits, a hundred couples being se- 

 lected by him with a view to the creation of pe- 

 culiarities. By always choosing the parents, 

 "d'apres des circonstances individuelles fixes et 

 toujours les memes dous certaines lignes," he 

 succeeded in obtaining a number of mal-forma- 

 tions according to his preconceived plan. And 

 such experiments have been repeated on dogs, 

 pigeons and poultry with like success. 



From these facts, and others which may be 

 mentioned, it seems safe to say, that each new 

 individual inherits a predisposition to the habits 

 and structure, accidental or otherwise, of those 

 from whom it is derived. When all the paterjial 

 influences concerned in moulding the constitu- 

 tion in utero are appreciated, we see the appro- 

 priateness of the saying of S. T. Coleridge, — 

 "that the history of a man for the nine months 

 preceding his birth would probably be far more 

 interesting, and contain events of greater mo- 

 ment, than all that follows it." 



It may be noticed in this connection, that ac- 

 cidental and acquired mental habits and peculi- 

 arities, as well as physical, are susceptible of 

 transmission. Mr. Knight, who investigated the 

 subject for a series of years, tells us, "that a ter- 

 rier, whose parents have been in the habit of 

 fighting with polecats, will instantly show every 

 mark of anger, when he first perceives merely 

 the scent of that animal. A young spaniel brought 

 up with this terrier, showed no such emotion, but 

 it pursued a woodcock the first time it ever saw 

 one. The offspring of the shepherd's dog in ac- 

 tive service, instinctively follows the flock, while, 

 if his father or grandfather have been taken 

 away from this occupation, he will have lost the 

 art, and be difficult to teach." (The Body and 

 the Mind, by Geo. Moore, M.D.) "It is worthy 

 of notice, that the amble, tlie pace to which the 

 domestic horse in Spanish America is exclusively 

 trained, becomes in the course of some genera- 

 tions hereditary, and is assumed by the young 

 without teaching." (Encyclopedia Brit.) F. Cu- 

 vier observes that "young foxes in those parts of 

 the country where traps are set, manifest much 

 more prudence than even the old foxes in dis- 

 tricts where they are less persecuted." Birds on 

 newly-discovered islands soon learn to dread 

 man, and this dread they transmit. A recent 

 writer on hereditary influence says : "We had a 

 puppy, taken from its mother at six weeks old, 

 who although never taught to beg, an accom- 

 plishment his mother had been taught, sponta- 

 neously took to begging for everything he want- 

 ed, when about seven or eight months old ; he 

 would beg for food, beg to be let out the room, 

 and one day was found opposite a rabbit-hutch, 

 begging for the rabbits." — College Journal of 

 Medicine. 



"Is Charcoal Liable to Spontaneous Com- 

 bustion." — Certain Philadelphia chemists claim 

 that charcoal is liable to spontaneous combus- 

 tion, when ex'^josed to moisture, while the ScieU' 



