20 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



transmitted.' Did transmission occur, it would be 

 a magical act transcending everything we know of 

 Nature. All those cases of alleged transmission, 

 of which readers are perhaps thinking, are, I 

 venture to believe, mere coincidences. Thus, for 

 instance, if they are thinking of some man they 

 have heard of who broke a finger and afterwards 

 had a son with a crooked finger ; or of a woman 

 who saw a person with a hare-lip, and afterwards 

 bore a child with a hare-lip,^ they are certainly 

 thinking of mere coincidences. Ten thousand men 

 might break their fingers, yet among their offspring 

 not one might have a crooked finger. All women 

 see hare-lips, yet, comparatively speaking, hare- 

 lips are rare. Consider on the other hand for how 

 many generations women have bored their ears 

 and noses (in India). Yet when is a girl born 



' Vide Appendix C. 



2 This is an example of what is known as the transmission of a 

 maternal impression. A pregnant woman sees a deformity or some- 

 thing else, which powerfully impresses her. Her child, when born, is 

 supposed to reproduce the deformity. Telegony is a phenomenon of 

 much the same order. A mother, who has borne offspring to one sire, 

 is supposed to so influence offspring borne to subsequent sires that 

 these latter reproduce the pecuHarities of her first mate ; thus a white 

 woman who has borne a child to a negro is supposed ever after to 

 bear dark children to white men. In the one case the mother's 

 mind is thought to be impressed ; in the other case her body. Both 

 hypotheses furnish examples of the amazing looseness of thought 

 which occasionally prevails in biological writings. Neither the trans- 

 mission of maternal impressions nor telegony has stood the test of 

 accm-ate observation ; they are popular superstitions. But suppose 

 they had been demonstrated up to the hilt ; even in that case, the 



