448 INHEKITANCE. Chap. in. 



on the mind of those who have not attended to the subject, 

 the full conviction of the force of inheritance which is slowly 

 acquired by rearing animals, by studying the many treatises 

 which have been published on the various domestic animals, 

 and by conversing with breeders. I will select a few facts 

 of the kind, which, as far as I can judge, have most influenced 

 my own mind. Witli man and the domestic animals, certain 

 peculiarities have appeared in an individual, at rare intervals, 

 or only once or twice in the history of the world, but have 

 reappeared in several of the children and grandchildren. 

 Thus Lambert, " the porcupine-man," whose skin was thickly 

 covered with warty projections, which were periodically 

 moulted, had all his six children and two grandsons similarly 

 affected. 5 The face and body being covered with long hair, 

 accompanied by deficient teeth ('to which I shall hereafter 

 refer), occurred in three successive generations in a Siamese 

 family ; but this case is not unique, as a woman 6 with a 

 completely hairy face who was exhibited in London in 1663, 

 and another instance has recently occurred. Colonel Hallam " 

 has described a race of two-legged pigs, "the hinder extremi- 

 ties being entirely wanting ;" and this deficiency was trans- 

 mitted through three generations. In fact, all races 

 presenting any remarkable peculiarity, such as solid-hoofed 

 swine. Mauchanip sheep, niata cattle, &c, are instances of the 

 long-continued inheritance of rare deviations of structure. 



When Ave reflect that certain extraordinary peculiarities 

 have thus appeared in a single individual out of many 

 millions, all exposed in the same country to the same general 

 conditions of life, and, again, that the same extraordinary 

 peculiarity has sometimes appeared in individuals living 

 under widely different conditions of life, we are driven to 

 conclude that such peculiarities are not directly due to the 

 action of the surrounding conditions, but to unknown laws 

 acting on the organisation or constitution of the individual ; 



5 ' Philosophical Transactions.' 1755, the males alone, 

 p. 23. 1 have seen only second-hand 6 Barbara Van Beck, figured, as I 



accounts of tiie two grandsons. Mr. am informed by the Rer. \V. D. Fox. 



Sedgwick, in a paper to which I shall in Woodburn's ' Gallery of Rare 



hereafter often refer, states that/owr Portraits,' 1816, vol. ii. 

 generations were affected, and in each ' 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.,' 1833, p. 16. 



