842 The Zoologist — August, 18G7. 



natural law, to which I now desire to invite especial attention, is not 

 the reversion to a remote ancestral type so much as a particular 

 and definite phase of the law, a reversion to the distinguishing 

 characters of the grandparent, and this phase of a universal law I 

 propose to call " avisra." * 



Beginning with man, we find the foot-prints of avism in mental and 

 physical peculiarities, and descending even to malformation. Lunacy, 

 phthisis, gout, are beyond all question hereditary, and beyond all 

 question descend from grandparents, and so does abnormal formation. 

 Professor Huxley cites a familiar instance. A Maltese family, Kelleia, 

 had a tendency to produce offspring with six fingers to each hand, and 

 six toes to each foot; Gralio Kelleia was the son of parents who had 

 the ordinary number of fingers and toes ; of his grandparents we know 

 nothing ; but Gratio had six fingers and six toes : at the age of twenty- 

 two he married a lady with five fingers and five toes, and the result of 

 the marriage was four children, one of whom, Salvator, had six fingers 

 and six toes ; the others, George, Andre and Marie, had the normal 

 number of five : all of them married people having five fingers and five 

 toes, but Marie's first boy was born with six fingers and six toes: 

 these four generations may be designated thus : — 



a. Name unrecorded, normal. 



B. Gratio, monstrous. 



c. Marie, normal. 



D. Marie's boy, monstrous. 



In this case whatever divergent facts may be adduced, and there are 

 several, it still seems impossible to resist the conclusion that Marie's 

 normal condition, and her son's abnormal condition, were equally 

 derived from grandparents : c was similar to a, and D similar to B. 

 There have been other instances of six-fingered gentry in the 

 world, but I think none so carefully noted as this of the Kelleia's, 

 which was first recorded by .Reaumur. Peculiarities of all kinds, 

 originating how they may, reappear in the same way : I have 

 been particularly struck with the incurable habits of young 

 people, and have found them hereditary; thus one persisted in biting 

 his nails ; a second in pressing the nail of her fifth finger into the palm 

 of her hand ; a third in holding the little finger erect when holding a 

 cup of tea: all habits derived from their grandmothers, whom they 

 had never seen. 



* From arus, a grandparent. 



