I02 HEREDITY AND EUGENICS 



beautifulwifeof Henry VIII.,is said to have had super- 

 numerary breasts,* teeth anomalies, and an extra 

 terminal phalanx on hands and feet.f The " outside " 

 digits — i.e., thumb and little finger and great and 

 little toe — most commonly show doubling. Doubling 

 of other digits is much more uncommon, becoming 

 still more so as the number increases. Thus the 

 presence of ten digits on one hand or foot is extremely 

 uncommon in museums, while cases of seven are 

 relatively often described. This condition is often 

 combined with other abnormalities, but hexadactyly 

 and heptadactyly often occur in otherwise normal 

 individuals. The extra digits are frequently syn- 

 dactylous, not fully separated from their neighbours. 

 Hexadactyty is often symmetrical (two double 

 thumbs or two double little fingers), but there 

 are man}^ exceptions, and scarcely two cases agree 

 in detail. 



Three main types of abnormality appear : 

 (i) Simplest and most common; the extra digit is a 

 small attachment not adherent to the skeleton, and 

 often without bones or cartilage, muscle or tendons. 

 (2) Often the extra digit is more or less like an 

 ordinary finger or toe, containing bones and con- 

 nected with the skeleton of the finger. (3) Ver}^ 

 seldom the extra digit is complete and also has its 



* Other cases of supernumerary mammae in more than one 

 generation are cited, for example, by Darwin, Descent of Man, 

 p. 41. 



t The only confirmation of this statement I have been able to 

 find is the following, from Wyat's Life of Anne Boleyn (Ed. Singer, 

 p. 423) : " There was found, indeed, upon the side of her nail 

 upon one of her fingers some little show of a nail, which yet was 

 so small, by the report of those that have seen her, as the work- 

 master seemed to leave it an occasion of greater grace to her hand, 

 which, with the tip of one of her other fingers, might be, and usually 

 was, by her hidden, without any least blemish to it." It is a fact, 

 however, that among the portraits of the wives of Henry VIII., 

 Anne Boleyn's is the only one in which the hands are not shown. 



