8 INHE1UTANCE. Chap. XII. 



have been recorded of epilepsy, consumption, asthma, stone 

 in the bladder, cancer, profuse bleeding from the slightest in- 

 juries, of the mother not giving milk, and of bad parturition 

 being inherited. In this latter respect I may mention an odd 



case given by a good observer, 13 in which the fault lay in the 



offspring, and not in the mother : in a part of Yorkshire the 

 farmers continued to select cattle with large hind-quarters, until 

 they made a strain called " Dutch-buttocked," and " the mon- 

 strous size of the buttocks of the calf was frequently fatal to the 

 cow, and numbers of cow r s were annually lost in calving." 



Instead of giving numerous details on various inherited malformations 

 and diseases, I will confine myself to one organ, that which is the most 

 complex, delicate, and probably best-known in the human frame, namely, 

 the eye, with its accessory parts. To begin with the latter : I have heard 

 of a family in which parents and children were affected by drooping eye- 

 lids, in so peculiar a manner, that they could not see without throwing 

 their heads backwards ; and Sir A. Carlisle u specifies a pendulous fold to 

 the eyelids as inherited. " In a family," says Sir H. Holland, 15 " where the 

 father had a singular elongation of the upper eyelid, seven or eight children 

 were born with the same deformity ; two or three other children having 

 it not," Many persons, as I hear from Mr. Paget, have two or three of 

 the hairs in their eyebrows (apparently corresponding with the vibrissas 

 of the lower animals) much longer than the others ; and even so trifling 

 a peculiarity as this certainly runs in families. 



With respect to the eye itself, the highest authority in England, Mr. 

 Bowman, has been so kind as to give me the following remarks on certain 

 inherited imperfections. First, hypermetropia, or morbidly long sight : in 

 this affection, the organ, instead of being spherical, is too flat from front 

 to back, and is often altogether too small, so that the retina is brought 

 too forward for the focus of the humours ; consequently a convex glass 

 is required for clear vision of near objects, and frequently even of distant 

 ones. This state occurs congenitally, or at a very early age, often in 

 several children of the same family, where one of the parents has presented 

 it. 16 Secondly, myopia, or short-sight, in which the eye is egg-shaped 

 and too long from front to back ; the retina in this case lies behind the 

 focus, and is therefore fitted to see distinctly only very near objects. This 

 condition is not commonly congenital, but comes on in youth, the liability 

 to it being well known to be transmissible from parent to child. The 

 change from the spherical to the ovoidal shape seems the immediate con- 



13 Marshall, quoted by Youatt in his 16 This affection, as I hear from 

 work on Cattle, p. 284. Mr. Bowman, has been ably described 



14 'Philosoph. Transact./ 1814, p. and spoken of as hereditary by Dr. 

 94. ' Donders, of Utrecht, whose work was 



15 ' Medical Notes and Keflections,' published in English by the Sydenham 

 3rd edit., p. 33. Society in 1864. 



