The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2). Darwin Charles
millions, composed, we will assume, of ten million families, each containing six members. On these data, Professor Stokes has calculated for me that the odds will be no less than 8333 millions to 1 that in the ten million families there will not be even a single family in which one parent and two children will be affected by the peculiarity in question. But numerous cases could be given, in which several children have been affected by the same rare peculiarity with one of their parents; and in this case, more especially if the grandchildren be included in the calculation, the odds against mere coincidence become something prodigious, almost beyond enumeration.
In some respects the evidence of inheritance is more striking when we consider the reappearance of trifling peculiarities. Dr. Hodgkin formerly told me of an English family in which, for many generations, some members had a single lock differently coloured from the rest of the hair. I knew an Irish gentleman, who, on the right side of his head, had a small white lock in the midst of his dark hair: he assured me that his grandmother had a similar lock on the same side, and his mother on the opposite side. But it is superfluous to give instances; every shade of expression, which may often be seen alike in parents and children, tells the same story. On what a curious combination of corporeal structure, mental character, and training, must handwriting depend! yet every one must have noted the occasional close similarity of the handwriting in father and son, although the father had not taught his son. A great collector of franks assured me that in his collection there were several franks of father and son hardly distinguishable except by their dates. Hofacker, in Germany, remarks on the inheritance of handwriting; and it has even been asserted that English boys when taught to write in France naturally cling to their English manner of writing.8 Gait, gestures, voice, and general bearing are all inherited, as the illustrious Hunter and Sir A. Carlisle have insisted.9 My father communicated to me two or three striking instances, in one of which a man died during the early infancy of his son, and my father, who did not see this son until grown up and out of health, declared that it seemed to him as if his old friend had risen from the grave, with all his highly peculiar habits and manners. Peculiar manners pass into tricks, and several instances could be given of their inheritance; as in the case, often quoted, of the father who generally slept on his back, with his right leg crossed over the left, and whose daughter, whilst an infant in the cradle, followed exactly the same habit, though an attempt was made to cure her.10 I will give one instance which has fallen under my own observation, and which is curious from being a trick associated with a peculiar state of mind, namely, pleasurable emotion. A boy had the singular habit, when pleased, of rapidly moving his fingers parallel to each other, and, when much excited, of raising both hands, with the fingers still moving, to the sides of his face on a level with the eyes; this boy, when almost an old man, could still hardly resist this trick when much pleased, but from its absurdity concealed it. He had eight children. Of these, a girl, when pleased, at the age of four and a half years, moved her fingers in exactly the same way, and what is still odder, when much excited, the raised both her hands, with her fingers still moving, to the sides of her face, in exactly the same manner as her father had done, and sometimes even still continued to do when alone. I never heard of any one excepting this one man and his little daughter who had this strange habit; and certainly imitation was in this instance out of the question.
Some writers have doubted whether those complex mental attributes, on which genius and talent depend, are inherited, even when both parents are thus endowed. But he who will read Mr. Galton's able paper11 on hereditary talent will have his doubts allayed.
Unfortunately it matters not, as far as inheritance is concerned, how injurious a quality or structure may be if compatible with life. No one can read the many treatises12 on hereditary disease and doubt this. The ancients were strongly of this opinion, or, as Ranchin expresses it, Omnes Græci, Arabes, et Latini in eo consentiunt. A long catalogue could be given of all sorts of inherited malformations and of predisposition to various diseases. With gout, fifty per cent. of the cases observed in hospital practice are, according to Dr. Garrod, inherited, and a greater percentage in private practice. Every one knows how often insanity runs in families, and some of the cases given by Mr. Sedgwick are awful, – as of a surgeon, whose brother, father, and four paternal uncles were all insane, the latter dying by suicide; of a Jew, whose father, mother, and six brothers and sisters were all mad; and in some other cases several members of the same family, during three or four successive generations, have committed suicide. Striking instances have been recorded of epilepsy, consumption, asthma, stone in the bladder, cancer, profuse bleeding from the slightest injuries, of the mother not giving milk, and of bad parturition being inherited. In this latter respect I may mention an odd case given by a good observer,13 in which the fault lay in the offspring, and not in the mother: in a part of Yorkshire the farmers continued to select cattle with large hind-quarters, until they made a strain called "Dutch-buttocked," and "the monstrous size of the buttocks of the calf was frequently fatal to the cow, and numbers of cows were annually lost in calving."
Instead of giving numerous details on various inherited malformations and diseases, I will confine myself to one organ, that which is the most complex, delicate, and probably best-known in the human frame, namely, the eye, with its accessory parts. To begin with the latter: I have heard of a family in which parents and children were affected by drooping eyelids, in so peculiar a manner, that they could not see without throwing their heads backwards; and Sir A. Carlisle14 specifies a pendulous fold to the eyelids as inherited. "In a family," says Sir H. Holland,15 "where the father had a singular elongation of the upper eyelid, seven or eight children were born with the same deformity; two or three other children having it not." Many persons, as I year from Mr. Paget, have two or three of the hairs in their eyebrows (apparently corresponding with the vibrissæ of the lower animals) much longer than the others; and even so trifling a peculiarity as this certainly runs in families.
With respect to the eye itself, the highest authority in England, Mr. Bowman, has been so kind as to give me the following remarks on certain inherited imperfections. First, hypermetropia, or morbidly long sight: in this affection, the organ, instead of being spherical, is too flat from front to back, and is often altogether too small, so that the retina is brought too forward for the focus of the humours; consequently a convex glass is required for clear vision of near objects, and frequently even of distant ones. This state occurs congenitally, or at a very early age, often in several children of the same family, where one of the parents has presented it.16 Secondly, myopia, or short-sight, in which the eye is egg-shaped, and too long from front to back; the retina in this case lies behind the focus, and is therefore fitted to see distinctly only very near objects. This condition is not commonly congenital, but comes on in youth, the liability to it being well known to be transmissible from parent to child. The change from the spherical to the ovoidal shape seems the immediate consequence of something like inflammation of the coats, under which they yield, and there is ground for believing that it may often originate in causes acting directly on the individual affected, and may thenceforward become transmissible. When both parents are myopic Mr. Bowman has observed the hereditary tendency in this direction to be heightened, and some of the children to be myopic at an earlier age or in a higher degree than their parents. Thirdly, squinting is a familiar example of hereditary transmission: it is frequently a result of such optical defects as have been above mentioned; but the more primary and uncomplicated forms of it are also sometimes in a marked degree transmitted in a family. Fourthly, Cataract, or opacity of the crystalline lens, is commonly observed in persons whose parents have been similarly affected, and often at an earlier age in the children than in the parents. Occasionally more than one child in a family is thus afflicted, one of whose parents or other relation presents the senile form of the complaint. When cataract affects several members of a family in the same generation, it is often seen to commence at about the same age in each; e. g., in one family several infants or young persons may suffer from it; in another, several persons of middle age. Mr. Bowman also informs me that he has occasionally seen, in several members of the
Hofacker, 'Ueber die Eigenschaften,' &c., 1828, s. 34. Report by Pariset in 'Comptes Rendus,' 1847, p. 592.
Hunter, as quoted in Harlan's 'Med. Researches,' p. 530. Sir A. Carlisle, 'Phil. Transact.,' 1814, p. 94.
Girou de Buzareignues, 'De la Génération,' p. 282.
'Macmillan's Magazine,' July and August, 1865.
The works which I have read and found most useful are Dr. Prosper Lucas's great work, 'Traité de l'Hérédité Naturelle,' 1847. Mr. W. Sedgwick, in 'British and Foreign Medico-Chirurg. Review,' April and July, 1861, and April and July, 1863: Dr. Garrod on Gout is quoted in these articles. Sir Henry Holland, 'Medical Notes and Reflections,' 3rd edit., 1855. Piorry, 'De l'Hérédité dans les Maladies,' 1840. Adams, 'A Philosophical Treatise on Hereditary Peculiarities,' 2nd edit., 1815. Essay on 'Hereditary Diseases,' by Dr. J. Steinan, 1843.
Marshall, quoted by Youatt in his work on Cattle, p. 284.
'Philosoph. Transact.,' 1814, p. 94.
'Medical Notes and Reflections,' 3rd edit., p. 33.
This affection, as I hear from Mr. Bowman, has been ably described and spoken of as hereditary by Dr. Dondera, of Utrecht, whose work was published in English by the Sydenham Society in 1864.