The Laws of Pleredity. 157 



cases has nearly always the effect of an invasion. The evidences 

 of this are numberless. Catherine and Marie de Medicis gave 

 us pure Italians ; in the same way La Farnese may be traced in 

 Carlos II. of Spain ; Louis XVI. was a real Saxon king, and more 

 German than the Germans themselves.' * 



Dr. P. Lucas, though he does not explicitly accept this law, still 

 does not reject it. 



Let us, therefore, look at the facts which support it. These we take 

 at three sources : intermixture of races, mental diseases, and history. 



i. From the physiological point of view cases of cross heredity 

 are very numerous under normal conditions, that is, when the 

 parents are healthy and of good constitutions. When one of 

 them presents any anomaly or deformity, we find that cross- 

 heredity is still more common : thus, a curved spine, lameness, 

 rickets, sexdigitism, deaf-muteness, mycrophthalmy in short, all 

 organic imperfections pass from the father to the daughters, and 

 from the mother to the sons. 2 



From the psychological point of view, Gall cites the curious 

 case of twins of opposite sexes, where the boy was like the 

 mother, a very stupid woman, and the girl like the father, who was 

 a man of considerable talent. 



In cross breeding, this appears very plainly. When a dog is 

 crossed with a wolf-bitch, the males usually inherit the character of 

 the wolf, the females that of the dog. It even appears that this 

 transfer of qualities to the opposite sex takes place more regularly 

 with regard to moral than to physical characters. As will be seen, 

 Buffon, after in vain trying to bring about a crossing o a dog and 

 a she-wolf, abandoned the attempt. But chance brought about 

 that which art could not do. The wolf dropped two cubs; the 

 one a male which physically resembled the dog, but in character 

 was wild and savage ; the other, a female, physically resembled the 

 wolf, but in disposition was gentle, familiar, and even trouble- 

 somely affectionate. From the crossing of a he-goat and a bitch 

 hound sprang young ones, some of which were like the goat, 

 others like the bitch : the latter had all the habits of their sire. 



1 Histoire de France, vol. xvii. 



2 Girou has a great number of observations on this point. De la Generation , 

 276 284. 



