30 A TREATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING. 



which the color is an equally well-established 

 characteristic. Man has five fingers on each 

 hand and five toes on each foot, and in this 

 particular the race is uniform; yet a "sport" 

 is occasionally found where the number of 

 fingers or toes is increased to six. When these 

 accidental variations once occur they are liable, 

 under favorable conditions, to be transmitted 

 by inheritance; but under the ordinary oper- 

 ations of Nature's laws, when the conditions of 

 life remain unchanged, these anomalies usually 

 disappear within one or two generations and the 

 normal and characteristic type of the race is 

 resumed. A well-authenticated instance of the 

 transmission of accidental variations is found 

 in the oft- quoted case of Edward Lambert, 

 whose whole body, with the exception of the 

 face, the soles of the feet and the palms of the 

 hands, was covered with a sort of horny excres- 

 cence, which was periodically molted. His six 

 sons all inherited the same peculiarity, and the 

 only one of the six that survived transmitted 

 it, in turn, to all his sons. This abnormal char- 

 acteristic was transmitted through the male 

 line for six generations, and then disappeared.* 

 It is a very remarkable illustration of the pecu- 

 liarities of heredity that the females of this 

 family should have failed to inherit this pecu- 



* "Philosophical Transactions," Vol. XVII, p. 23. 



