HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 333 
children, fifteen of whom were boys. The son and the 
grandson of the great Condé counted nineteen children in 
their two families, and their great-grandfather, killed at 
Jarnac, had ten. The first four Guises counted together 
forty-three children, thirty of them boys. Achille de 
Harlay, father of the first President de Harlay, had nine 
children, his father ten, his great-grandfather eighteen. In 
some families this fertility persisted for five or six genera- 
tions. The mean length of human life depends on locali- 
ties, food, state of civilization, but individual longevity 
seems to be wholly independent of these conditions. It is 
remarked among those who lead lives of the hardest toil, 
as well as among those who take the greatest care of their 
health, and it seems to depend upon some inward potency 
- of vitality received by individuals from their ancestors. 
This is so well understood that, in England, life-insurance 
companies require from their agents full reports as to the 
longevity of the ancestors of applicants. In the family of 
Turgot the age of fifty-nine years was seldom outlived, and 
the man who has given lustre to its name, on the day he 
reached his fiftieth year, felt a presentiment that the end of 
his life was not far off. Notwithstanding his appearance 
of perfectly good health, and his extremely vigorous con- 
stitution, from that time he held himself in readiness for 
death, and he did in fact die at the age of fifty-three. 
Heredity often transmits muscular strength, and vari- 
ous other motive energies. Antiquity had its families of 
athletes. The English have their families of boxers. The 
jate inquiries of Mr. Galton on the subject of wrestlers and 
racing-crews, prove that the victors in the contests in 
which these men take part usually belong to a small num- 
ber of families in which skill and agility come by descent. 
Suppleness and grace in dancing movements are transmit- 
ted, too, as the famous family of the Vestris witnesses. It 
is the same with different peculiarities of the voice, stam- 
