2IO VESTIGES OF THE 



ing, and being exposed to the open air only as much as 

 health requires, co-operate with food in increasing the 

 elegance of a race of human beings. 



Subject only to these modifying agencies, there is, as 

 has been said, a remarkable persistency in national fea- 

 tures and forms, insomuch that a single individual thrown 

 into a family different from himself is absorbed in it, and 

 all trace of him lost after a few generations. But while 

 there is such a persistency to ordinary observation, it 

 would also appear that nature has a power of producing 

 new varieties, though this is only done rarely. Such 

 novelties of type abound in the vegetable world, are seen 

 more rarely in the animal circle, and perhaps are least 

 frequent of occurrence in our own race. There is a noted 

 instance in the production, on a New England farm, of a 

 variety of sheep with unusually short legs, which was 

 kept up by breeding, on account of the convenience in 

 that country of having sheep which are unable to jump 

 over low fences. The starting and maintaining a hreed 

 of cattle, that is, a variety marked by some desirable 

 peculiarity, are familiar to a large class of persons. It 

 appears only necessary, when a variety has been thus 

 produced, that a union should take place between indi- 

 viduals similarly characterised, in order to establish it. 

 Early in the last century, a man named Lambert w^as 

 born in Suftblk, with semi-horny excrescences of about 

 half an inch long, thickly growing all over his body. 

 The peculiai-ity was transmitted to his children, and was 

 last heard of in a third generation. The peculiarity of 

 six fingers on the hand and six toes on the feet, appears 

 in like manner in families which haVe no record or tradi- 

 tion of such a peculiarity having affected them at any 

 former period, and it is then sometimes seen to descend 

 through several generations. It was Mr. Lawrence's 



