THE BREEDER'S CORNER-STONE. 27 



And so Darwin quotes (" Animals and Plants 

 Under Domestication/' Vol. II, p. 25,) from an 

 earlier writer the case of a man who was in the 

 habit of sleeping on his back "with his right 

 leg crossed over the left, and whose daughter, 

 while an infant in the cradle, followed exactly 

 the same habit, though an attempt was made 

 to cure her." What may be considered an ex- 

 actly analogous case has happened here in my 

 immediate neighborhood. The celebrated race 

 horse and great sire imported King Ban, owned 

 by Maj. B. G. Thomas of Kentucky, had a sin- 

 gular trick of standing, even out in his pad- 

 dock, with his fore legs crossed. Year by year 

 it came to be noticed that the colts of his get 

 in a singularly large number repeated this habit 

 until it got to be a thing regularly looked for 

 that quite a number of the foals of each year 

 should repeat their sire's extraordinary way of 

 standing. Their genial owner was very fond of 

 calling attention to this circumstance as one of 

 many striking illustrations of King Ban's power 

 of impressing his get with his own character- 

 istics. 



As an extreme case of inheritance of a minor 

 peculiarity I may cite a case which has come 

 under my immediate observation of a gentle- 

 man whose hair grew in a peculiar manner on 

 his brow and at the crown of his head, being 

 what in common parlance is spoken of as very 



