222 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



transmission if the Claspers rowed in the same style as their 

 father, or if the present champion amateur sculler (making 

 allowances for the change introduced by the sliding seat) rows 

 very much like his father and his uncle. 



Some peculiarities, such as stammering, lisping, babbling, 

 and the like, are not easily referable to any special class of 

 hereditary traits, because it is not clear how far they are to 

 be regarded as depending on bodily or how far on mental 

 peculiarities. It might seem obvious that stammering was 

 in most cases uncontrollable by the will, and babbling might 

 seem as certainly controllable. Yet there are cases which 

 throw doubt on either conclusion. Thus, Dr. Lucas tells us 

 of a servant-maid whose loquacity was apparently quite uncon- 

 trollable. She would talk to people till they were ready to 

 faint ; and if there were no human being to listen to her, 

 she would talk to animals and inanimate objects, or would 

 talk aloud to herself. She had to be discharged. ' But/ 

 she said to her master, * I am not to blame ; it all comes 

 from my father. He had the same fault, and it drove my 

 mother to distraction ; and his father was just the same/ 

 Stammering has been transmitted through as many as five 

 generations. The same has been noticed of peculiarities of 

 vision. The Montmorency look, a sort of half squint, 

 affected nearly all the members of the Montmorency family. 

 The peculiarity called Daltonism, an inability to distinguish 

 between certain colours of the spectrum, was not so named, 

 as is often asserted, merely because the distinguished 

 chemist Dalton was affected by it, but because three 

 members of the same family were similarly affected. Deaf- 

 ness and blindness are not commonly hereditary where the 

 parents have lost sight or hearing either by accident or through 

 illness, even though the illness or accident occur during in- 

 fancy ; but persons born either blind or deaf frequently if 

 not commonly transmit the defect to some at least among 

 their offspring. Similar remarks apply to deaf-mutism. 



The senses of taste and smell must also be included in 

 the list of those which are affected by transmitted peculiar!- 



