21 
His remarks being mucli to oar present purpose, I now subjoin 
tbem : — ■ 
“ Kratio Kelleia, a Maltese, was born with six fingers upon each hand, and 
the like number of toes to each of his feet. He married when he was twenty- 
two years of age, and as, I suppose, there were no six-fingered ladies in Malta, 
he married an ordinarily five-fingered person. The result of that marriage 
was four children. The first, who was christened Salvator, had six fingers 
and six toes, like his father. The second was George, who had five fingers 
and toes ; but one of them was deformed, showing a tendency to variation. 
The third was Andre ; he had five fingers and five toes, quite perfect. The 
fourth was a girl, Marie ; she had five fingers and five toes, but her thumbs 
were deformed, showing a tendency toward the sixth. 
“ These children grew up, and when they came to adult years they all 
married ; and, of course, it happened that they all married five-fingered and 
five-toed persons. Now let us see what were the results. Salvator had four 
children ; they were two boys, a girl, and another boy. The first two boys 
and the girl were six-fingered and six-toed, like the grandfather ; the fourth 
boy had only five fingers and five toes. George had only four children : there 
were two girls with six fingers and six toes ; there was one girl with six 
fingers and five toes on the right side, and five fingers and five toes on the left 
side, so that she was half and half ; and the last had five fingers and five 
toes. The third, Andre, you will recollect, was perfectly well-formed ; and he 
had many children whose hands and feet were all regularly developed. Marie, 
the last, who, of course, married a man who had only five fingers, had four 
children : the first, a boy with six toes ; but the other three were normal. 
“ Now, observe what very extraordinary phenomena are presented here. 
You have an accidental variation, arising from what you may ca a mon- 
strosity ; you have that monstrosity tendency or variation diluted in the first 
instance by an admixture with a female of normal construction ; and you 
would naturally expect that, in the results of such an union, the monstrosity, 
if repeated, would be in equal proportion with the normal type ; that is to 
say, that the children would be half and half, some taking the peculiarity of 
the father, and the others being of the purely normal type of the mother. 
But you see, we have a great preponderance of the normal type. Well, this 
comes to be mixed once more with the pure, the normal type, and the ab- 
normal is again produced in large proportions, notwithstanding the second 
dilution. Now, what would have happened if these abnormal types had 
intermarried with each other ; that is to say, supposing the two boys of 
Salvator had taken it into their heads to marry their first cousins, or the two 
first girls of George, their uncle 1 You will remember tha.t these were all of 
the abnormal type of their grandfather. The result would probably have 
been in every case a further development of that abnormal type. . . . This 
case is narrated only as far as the third generation. Certainly, it would have 
been an exceedingly curious thing if we could have traced this matter any 
