c: 94 3 
VII. An Account of a Family having Hands and Feet with super- 
numerary Fingers and Toes. By Anthony Carlisle, Esq. 
F. R. S. In a Letter addressed to the Right Hon. Sir Joseph 
Banks, Bart. K. B. P. R. S. 
Read December 23, 1813, 
Dear Sir, 
The following account of a family having hands and feet 
with supernumerary lingers and toes, and the hereditary 
transmission of the same peculiarity to the fourth generation, 
appears to be worth preserving, since it displays the influence 
of each of the propagating sexes; the male and the female 
branches of the original stem having alike reproduced this 
redundancy of parts. I have carefully inspected two persons 
of this family at the time of their being in London, namely, 
Abiah Colburh, and his son Zerah Colburn, and have taken 
the particulars of the rest from Abiah Colburn himself, whose 
narrative was several times repeated to me, without any de- 
viation. 
Zerah Colburn, a native of the township of Cabot in the 
province of Vermont, in North America, has been lately 
brought to London, ar'd publicly exhibited fur his extraordi- 
nary powers in arithmetical computations from memory. This 
boy has a supernumerary little linger growing from the out- 
side of the metacarpus of each hand, and a supernumerary 
little toe upon the outside of the metatarsus of each foot. 
