HEREDITARY TRAITS. 223 



ties. If we include the craving for liquor among such 

 peculiarities, we might at once cite a long list of cases ; but 

 this craving must be regarded as nervo-psychical, the sense 

 of taste having in reality very little to do with it. It is 

 doubtful how the following hideous instance should be 

 classed. It is related by Dr. Lucas. * A man in Scotland 

 had an irresistible desire to eat human flesh. He had a 

 daughter ; although removed from her father and mother, 

 who were both sent to the stake before she was a year old, 

 and although brought up among respectable people, this girl, 

 like her father, yielded to the horrible craving for human 

 fle<-h.' He must be an ardent student of physiological 

 science who regrets that at this stage circumstances inter- 

 vened which prevented the world from ascertaining whether 

 the peculiarity would have descended to the third and fourth 

 generations. 



Amongst the strangest cases of hereditary transmissions 

 are those relating to handwriting. Darwin cites several 

 curious instances in his Variation of Plants and Animals 

 under Domestication. ' On what a curious combination of 

 corporeal structure, mental character, and training/ he 

 remarks, 'must handwriting depend. Yet everyone must 

 have noted the occasional close similarity of the handwriting 

 in father and son, even although the father had not taught 

 the son. A great collector of franks assured me that in his 

 collection there were several franks of father and son hardly 

 distinguishable except by their dates. ' Hofacker, in Germany, 

 remarks on the inheritance of handwriting, and it has been 

 even asserted that English boys when taught to write in 

 France naturally cling to their English manner of writing. 

 Dr. Carpenter mentions the following instance as having 

 occurred in his own family, as showing that the character of 

 the handwriting is independent of the special teaching which 

 the right hand receives in this art : * A gentleman who emi- 

 grated to the United States and settled in the back woods, 

 before the end of last century, was accustomed from time to 

 time to write long letters to his sister in England, giving an 



