1894,] Criticism: Transmission of Mutilations. 5 
compared along side of each other. ' In the usually very active 
movement of the animals, moreover, the difference in the pos- 
ture of the legs does not become so evident as when the ani- 
mals move slowly or stand still. 
In judging this case it is to be noted, first of all, that the 
abnormality of the young dog which might be regarded as in- 
herited (transmitted), does not agree in many particulars, 
especially in regard to the posture of the leg, with the acquired 
deformity of the father. There is, as it appears to me, a double 
interpretation of the case possible. Either one may assume 
that the abnormality of the young dog has appeared without any 
inheritance as a germ variation, which is not further traceable 
to its causes, and that a case of transmission has only appar- 
ently arisen, since by chance the paternal animal showed an 
acquired abnormality of the same leg as that on which, in the 
young animal, an abnormality arose by variation; or, on the 
other hand, one may regard the acquired abnormality of the 
paternal animal as the cause of the congenital abnormality of 
the young dog; in the latter event, it must be carefully noticed 
that the inherited peculiarity is very little similar to the original. 
Hence, there would be present only a certain influence, but not 
such a transmission as we perceived in the case of individual 
variations (blastogenic changes) in which the transmitted 
peculiarity differs, porhepi in degree from the transmitting, 
but is always like it. 
As far as the limping of the two dogs is concerned, I do not 
think that further significance can be attributed to this circum- 
stance. To be sure, both dogs limp on the same leg—the 
father always alike, the son sometimes more and sometimes less, 
and often scarcely noticeably ; thereby is by no means proved 
that the same cause lies at the bottom of the limping of both 
animals. As is well-known, quadrupeds, and especially dogs. 
and horses, limp in consequence of the most varied causes, and 
it is often very difficult to find the real ground of the linping. 
In the case described, the limp of the father is evidently the 
result of the fall. I was as little successful as other investi- 
gators in finding the true reason of the trouble in the son, 
= since nowhere on the entire body was a tender spot to be dis- 
cove 
