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in every age ; hence the amazing peculiarity of the Jewish 

 race, whose recognition of the force of heredity is shown by 

 their having, at an early period, founded part of their 

 judicial system in accordance with the observed transmission 

 of physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities from parents 

 to children. The Greeks, also, were fully conversant with 

 these phenomena, and the Spartans, regarding them as of 

 still greater importance, actually made a selection from their 

 newly-born children, thus endeavouring to secure only the 

 " survival of the fittest ! " The Romans, likewise, distin- 

 guished families by their hereditary peculiarities, denomina- 

 ting them on account of physical characteristics as nasones, 

 or big-nosed ; labeones, or thick-lipped ; the buccones, or 

 swollen-cheeked ; and the capitones, or big-headed. The 

 facts concerning the transmission of family likenesses, and 

 of general characteristic resemblances which descend from 

 ancestry and parents to children are so well and universally 

 recognised that I need not now dwell upon them further ; 

 they may be observed in every family, and wherever there 

 are parents and children may be studied with much interest, 

 not only as to the inheritance of family characteristics, but 

 with special regard to the still more curious phenomena of 

 individual peculiarities. It may here be observed that 

 children, whose likeness to their mother is more apparent 

 at one period of their lives, become much more like their 

 father at another period. In accounting for this it has 

 been stated that these phenomena depend upon the deep- 

 lying potentialities of the family stock, which lie hidden 

 .and dormant in every individual until developed by either 

 " the shock of the constitutional changes which take place 

 naturally at particular epochs of life the intimate bodily 

 changes that are induced by the disturbing effects of such 



