PHYSICAL CHARACTERS IN MAN 133 



discuss the occurrence of hermaphroditic conditions 

 in reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and cyclostomata. 

 Hanna (1921) states several interesting facts regard- 

 ing hermaphroditism in seals. It is a rare condition 

 in mammals, and has not been previously recorded 

 in seals. Among 33,000 male seals killed on the 

 Pribiloff Islands of Alaska in 191 8, two were found 

 to be hermaphrodites. 



An American family is described by Goldsmith 

 (1922) in which there are two round openings in the 

 parietal bones at the back of the skull. These 

 sometimes form a single opening in the younger 

 stages, and in some cases it may later close up entirely. 

 It is clearly a failure to complete development. In 

 five generations of this family sixteen cases are known. 

 The manner of its inheritance is not clear. Micro- 

 cephalic people occasionally occur in families (Bern- 

 stein, 1922). There is often more than one such 

 child in a family, but they seldom occur in successive 

 generations, and nothing appears to be known con- 

 cerning the inheritance of this condition. 



Absence of the external ear is cited (Windle, 1891) 

 in a case where a normal father had a son with the 

 defect. The father's male cousin had the defect, 

 and two of his male children, but a daughter was 

 normal. A Mendelian dominant is suggested, a 

 result which is especially interesting in the light of 

 recent experiments with earless sheep, given below. 

 Sedgwick (i 861) cites a case of a boy with no external 

 left ear, the meatus being imperforate. This boy's 

 father had a male cousin whose tw^o sons exhibited 

 a deficiency of the cartilage of the left ear, while the 

 daughter was normal. The manner of inheritance 

 is not clear, except that it is from the original great- 

 grandparents, and it is confined to one side of the 

 head. In another case a woman, two of her daughters, 

 and two granddaughters had rudimentary lobules 



