NOTES. 



383 



under the name " Kerson's Seedling Goose- 

 berry." It turns out to be no garden seed- 

 ling, but a wild one originally taken from a 

 common hedge in the neighborhood of Peter- 

 borough. In like manner, the celebrated 

 Bess Pool apple was originally discovered 

 in a wood near Nottingham. It is note- 

 worthy that the famous Lawton blackberry 

 of this country was found wild at New 

 Rochelle, in Westchester County, New York. 

 It may be remarked of all these, and similar 

 seedlings, that their specific excellence can- 

 not be propagated by seeds but only by cut- 

 tings, stolons, or grafts. 



Malformations. — Last winter one of our 

 pupils at New Brunswick, N. J., communi- 

 cated the fact that he had purchased, the 

 previous autumn, of a huckster-woman in 

 Newark, a pair of young ducks, each having 

 four wings. The woman had twelve for 

 sale, and said that the eggs were laid by a 

 well-formed bird ; that she hatched a brood 

 of sixteen, every one of them having four 

 wings. The youth said that his birds used 

 both pairs of wings in flying, that is, in mov- 

 ing rapidly on the surface of the pond. 

 They did not live long. Whether this was 

 due to any defective vitality in the birds, 

 or to any extraneous cause, could not be 

 learned. But we turn from these tradition- 

 ary facts to a catastrophe, which our own 

 eyes have inspected, as having befallen a 

 family of cats. 



About a mile and a half from Freehold, 

 N. J., live an intelligent family who have 

 had for several years an annual litter of 

 malformed cats. Several years ago a young 

 male cat was brought from Allentown, some 

 twenty miles distant. This cat had a de- 

 formity in one front-foot, which had six 

 toes. It coupled with a cat of normal form 

 and parts, and a litter of four or five was 

 the result, all with six-toed front-feet. The 

 she-cat became troublesome, getting into 

 the pantry, and so was sent off. The kit- 

 tens were disposed of, except one. With 

 this the paternal cat united, and the result 

 was four kittens, each having six toes on 

 each fore-foot, and five on each hind-foot. 

 This intermixing, as I understand, by this 

 Grimalkin Turk, has gone on for some four 

 years, and to-day, July 29th, I examined 

 one of his daughters, some three months 



old, which has six toes on each of the hind- 

 feet, and seven toes on each of the fore-feet. 

 The fore-feet are bifurcated ; that is, they 

 have, as it were, each two paws to one foot, 

 the outer paw of each foot being much the 

 larger, and having four toes ; and the inner, 

 or smaller paw, on each foot, having three 

 toes. This kitten was one of a litter of 

 four, all malformed precisely alike. On 

 some points I could not get the exact in- 

 formation desired. But I should think that 

 the vitality of these cats is becoming less 

 and less, as they do not become common. 

 To me it seems astounding when I attempt 

 to conceive of the physical equation which 

 enters into this erratic conception — the 

 minuteness of the abnormal material which, 

 plus the normal substance as imparted by 

 the spermatozoon, gives the initial impulse 

 to a result so eccentric. If, as Goethe de- 

 clared, " it is in her monstrosities that 

 Nature reveals to us her secrets," one would 

 like to know something of the mode and 

 motive of such a distribution of the life- 

 force. During our inspection of Miss Tab- 

 bie it was all very well so long as we stroked 

 her back with one hand. She purred, as 

 expressive of true feline luxuriousness ; 

 and, what is not common, she even licked 

 the other hand as indicating affection. But, 

 when we meddled with her extremities, she 

 evidently regarded it as taking personal 

 liberties with unpleasant peculiarities ; and 

 instantly rewarded our duplicity by invest- 

 ing in our hand the seven talons concealed 

 in that duplex napkin. — Samuel Lockwood, 

 in American Naturalist. 



NOTES. 



Prop. Eaton, of Yale College, kindly 

 calls attention to an inaccuracy in the 

 sketch of Dr. J. D. Hooker published in The 

 Popular Science Monthly for December, 

 1873. It is there stated that Dr. Hooker 

 was an only son. Prof. Eaton writes : " In 

 'Filices Exotica?,' p. 36, Sir W.J.Hooker 

 refers to the kindness formerly shown by Dr. 

 McFadyen, of Kingston, Jamaica, ' to a be- 

 loved son who fell a sacrifice to yellow fever 

 while under his hospitable roof.' The widow 

 of this son, Mrs. William Hooker, is still 

 living at Glasgow, and I saw her several 

 times at Dr. Hooker's house in Kew, in 

 1866." Prof. Eaton adds the interesting 

 fact that the grandfather of Dr. Hooker 

 on his mother's side, Dawson Turner, Esq., 



