SECT. I.] HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION. 87 



crooked, possessed an analogous defect. Gosse 1 cites the case 

 of an officer wounded in the battle of Eylau, who transmitted 

 to his offspring a scar on the forehead. Other instances of 

 inherited deformities are found in R. Wagner. 2 It has not 

 been established that, among peoples who give an artificial 

 form to the skull, succeeding generations exhibit a similar 

 shape. Poppig considers it probable, and Rathke 3 is inclined 

 to believe it from the shape of the skulls (macrocephalic) found 

 near Kertch, in the Crimea : Tschudi and Morton maintain the 

 contrary. Gosse 4 cites several instances in which irregular 

 cranial shapes, originating in families hitherto strange to it, 

 were transmitted by the parents ; but he adds, very justly, that 

 a regular transmission of artificial cranial shapes is not to be 

 expected when, as is usual, the heads of the boys only and not 

 of the girls, are artificially deformed. 



European children, compared with those of savage nations, 

 show that the form of the toes in the new-born is affected by 

 the habits of the parents of wearing boots and shoes. It 

 seems not yet to have been investigated how far this is the case 

 in the girls of the higher classes in China. On directing our 

 attention to psychical life, we meet with an hereditary trans- 

 mission of character in many instances. Among uncultured 

 nations we find first an instinctive use of the senses, indepen- 

 dent of all education and imitation, and which differs from that 

 of the civilized man. The Polynesian throws his children, who 

 have not yet attempted to swim, into the water, apparently 

 without any injury ; the mountaineer allows his infant to play 

 near declivities, dangers to which the citizen would scarcely 

 expose his children. Children of the natives of Pitcairn (mon- 

 grels of the White and Tahitians) swam when but two or three 

 years old merrily about in the surf. 5 The three year old 

 children of the Choiios, in South America, throw themselves 

 into the water to swim. 6 It does not, therefore, seem to be a 



1 " Essai sur la deform, art. du crane," p. 7, note, 1855. 



2 " Naturgesch. des menschen," ii, p. 245, and Lucas, ii, p. 490. 



3 Miiller's Archiv, p. 147, 1843. 



4 Loc. cit., pp. 134, 138. 



5 Bennett, " Narrative of a whaling voy.," i, p. 35, 1810. 



6 King and Fitzroy, " Narr. of the surveying voy. of the Adventure and 

 Beagle," append., p. 127, 1839. 



