92 Heredity. 



violent like him. She took after her father, the rest of the children 

 after their mother. 



We may apply to the instinct for murder what we have just said 

 of thieving. Instances of hereditary transmission are equally 

 conclusive and equally numerous. We have already seen the 

 heredity of homicide added, in a portion of a family, to the 

 heredity of theft ; and it is needless to cite cases that may be 

 found in abundance on all sides. 1 Here, however, are two 

 instances, in which the circumstances of the crime remove all 

 doubt as to its hereditary transmission. 



In the Annales Medico-Psychologiqiies for 1853 we read that two 



girls, Adele and Lucie H , aged thirteen and seventeen, were 



bound apprentices at Paris. Adele was of remarkably gentle 

 manners, and industrious ; but Lucie was of an unsociable dis- 

 position, and disagreeable to her mistress and her companions. 

 Enraged at her state of isolation, she endeavoured by threats and 

 caresses to persuade her sister to murder their mistress. As Adele 

 refused, Lucie passed a stay-lace round her neck, intending to 

 strangle her. Adele cried out, and the mistress came to the spot. 

 Lucie, disappointed in her hope of an accomplice, resolved to take 

 her vengeance herself. She collected bits of glass and ground them 

 to a powder; this she mixed with her mistress's dinner. The latter 

 for several days sufiered internal pain, the cause of which was 

 unknown, until she discovered the pounded glass in Lucie's hands. 

 The girl was arrested, but on her trial it was proved that her 

 grandfather had, during his life, made many attempts at murder, 

 and at last strangled his wife. His children never showed the 

 least symptoms of homicidal mania ; it reappeared, as we have 

 seen, in the second generation. 



In all cases where hereditary transmission takes the form of 

 atavism, it is clear that the influence of education has no weight. 

 The same may be said of all precocious homicidal acts, and of 

 those committed out of frivolous motives, like the following : 



A boy of fourteen, one of a family in bad repute, went, armed 

 with his bow, to a neighbouring village feast. He met on the way 

 a little girl of six, who had in her hand thirty sous to buy bread, 



1 See Lucas, i. 504, 520; Despine, ii. 281, 283 ; Mireau, Psychologic Morbide, 

 319, 321. 



