172 Heredity. 



cousin resembles the cousin, because each of them hold some 

 characteristic from a common ancestor, who transmitted it to the 

 intermediate generations, in whom it has been latent. The 

 researches made into the subject of generation during the past 

 fifty years, and the discovery of alternate generations, have greatly 

 enlarged our view of heredity, and this transmission in collateral 

 line has in it nothing wonderful. Hence this form of heredity, 

 which was admitted by Burdach and proved by Lucas, no longer 

 meets with opposition. We now regard it as nothing more or less 

 than a somewhat complicated case of atavism. We treat it here 

 under a special heading, merely for the sake of making the whole 

 subject plain : in fact, we are but continuing our study of rever- 

 sional heredity. However, a few facts will show the identity of 

 direct atavism with collateral heredity. 



1 1 am acquainted,' says Quatrefages, ' with a family into which 

 married a grand-niece of the illustrious Bailli de Suffren Saint- 

 Tropez, the last French commander in the great Indian wars 

 against the English, with Hyder AH for his ally. This lady had 

 two sons, the younger of whom, judging from a very fine portrait, 

 bore a very striking resemblance to his great-great-uncle, but was 

 not at all like his father or mother. The celebrated sailor, there- 

 fore, and his great-great-nephew reproduced, with an interval of 

 four generations between them, the features of a common ancestor. 

 Plainly, atavism acted here in both branches, for in this case there 

 is no direct heredity.' 



A well-formed man had two relatives affected with hare-lip ; 

 by his first wife he had eleven children, two of them hare-lipped, 

 and by his second wife, two who possessed the same deformity. 

 A woman in whose family were several members hard of 

 hearing gave birth to two deaf and dumb boys. A man whose 

 brother and whose aunt were deaf-mutes had five children, one 

 of them deaf and dumb. There are many similar cases of deaf- 

 muteness on record. A still more singular case is that of a 

 woman come of a family in which there had been several cases of 

 hypospadia, and who gave birth to two boys affected with that 

 anomaly. 1 



1 Lucas, ii. p. 36. 



