HEREDITY. 433 



population of six or eight, exclusive of young kittens). 

 'The tails are now in part mere stumps, some have a 

 semicircular sweep sideways, and some have the orig- 

 inal querl. Perhaps the deformity was somewhat 

 aggravated by in-and-in breeding and by artificial se- 

 lection practised by my Chinaman, who, with the per- 

 versity of his race, preferred the crooked tails, and 

 thus preserved them in preference to the normal kit- 

 tens. There are no other abnormally-tailed cats in 

 the neighborhood.' 



"This is the essential part of an unpublished letter 

 from that keen observer and eminent scientist, Prof. 

 Eugene W. Hilgard of the University of California. 



" Numerous cases have been recorded as occurring 

 with mankind. I will give but two, both of which 

 have not before been published. 



" e. A person, when a boy of ten years, cut the 

 terminal phalange of the little finger of his left hand 

 with a sickle. The joint was not injured, nor was the 

 function of the finger seriously impaired. There was, 

 however, an obvious deformity. The finger was ill- 

 shaped and crooked, and the nail abnormal. He mar- 

 ried and had two children, the first a son, with normal 

 fingers, the second a daughter, who had the little fin- 

 ger of the corresponding (the left) hand deformed 

 from birth in the same manner. The function of the 

 finger was not seriously injured, but the deformity was 

 precisely the same in shape, even to the malformation 

 of the finger-nail. She died at thirty, without chil- 

 dren, consequently no observation on a succeeding 

 generation could be noted. None of his other kindred 

 had malformed fingers, nor had any ancestor of the 

 child for at least three generations, and there was no 

 knowledge of any such in the more remote ancestry. 



