304 NATURE AND LIFE. 
eg, nasal speaking, slurring the 7, etc. Families of 
singers are numerous. Most children born of talkative 
people chatter from their cradle. Dr. Lucas mentions an 
instance of a servant of boundless loquacity. She talked 
people utterly out of breath ; she would chatter to animals, 
to things; she gabbled aloud to herself. Her master was 
obliged to dismiss: her. “ But,” she said, “it is not my 
fault, it comes from my father ; it was so strong in him that 
it drove my mother wild, and he had a father exactly like 
me in that.” 
-merine 
Heredity in anomalies of the organization has been no- 
ticed in a great number of cases. One of the strangest is 
that of Edward Lambert, whose body, excepting his face, 
the palms of his hands, and the soles of his feet, was cov- 
ered with a sort of armor of horny excrescences. He had 
six children, all of whom, from six weeks of age, showed 
the same singularity. The only one that survived trans- 
mitted it, like his father, to all his sons, and this transmis- 
sion, passing from male to male, continued for five genera- 
tions. The Colburn family is mentioned also, in which the 
parents transmitted to the children, during four genera- 
tions, what is called sexdigitism, that is, six fingers on each 
hand, and feet with six toes each. In the same way al- 
binism, lameness, hare-lip, and other anomalies, are repro- 
duced in the progeny. It has been observed that entirely 
individual peculiarities may be subject to a like tendency 
to reappearance. Giron de Buzareingues says that he 
knew a man who had the habit, when in bed, of lying on 
his back and crossing the right leg over the left one. One 
of his daughters was born with the same habit; she regu- 
larly took that position in the cradle, in spite of the impedi- 
ment of her baby-dress. The same author declares that he 
has often remarked children who had inherited habits 
equally singular, which could be accounted for neither by 
imitation nor by education. Darwin mentions another 
