96 THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS, 



left side, so that she was half and half. The last, a 

 boy, had five fingers and five toes. The third, Andre, 

 you will recollect, was perfectly well-formed, and he 

 had many children whose hands and feet were all regu- 

 larly developed. Marie, the last, who, of course, mar- 

 ried a man who had only five fingers, had four chil- 

 dren : the first, a boy, was born with six toes, but the 

 other three were normal. 



Now observe what very extraordinary phenomena 

 are presented here. You have an accidental variation 

 arising from what you may call a monstrosity ; you 

 have that monstrosity tendency or variation diluted in 

 the first instance by an admixture with a female of 

 normal construction, and you would naturally expect 

 that, in the results of such an union, the monstrosity, if 

 repeated, would be in equal proportion with the normal 

 type ; that is to say, that the children would be half 

 and half, some taking the peculiarity of the father, and 

 the others being of the purely normal type of the 

 mother ; but you see we have a great preponderance of 

 the abnormal type. Well, this comes to be mixed once 

 more with the pure, the normal type, and the abnor- 

 mal is again produced in large proportion, notwith- 

 standing the second dilution. Now what would have 

 happened if these abnormal types had intermarried with 

 each other ; that is to say, suppose the two boys of Sal- 

 vator had taken it into their heads to marry their first 

 cousins, the two first girls of George, their uncle ? You 

 will remember that these are all of the abnormal type 

 of their grandfather. The result would probably have 

 been, that their offspring w 7 ould have been in every 



