The Principles of Breeding | Page 6

any
people with whom they dwell, but continue distinct. They retain the

same features, the same figures, the same manners, customs and habits.
The Jew in Poland, in Austria, in London, or in New York, is the same;
and the money-changers of the Temple at Jerusalem in the time of our
Lord may be seen to-day on change in any of the larger marts of trade.
How is this? Just because the Jew is a "thorough-bred." There is with
him no intermarriage with the Gentile--no crossing, no mingling of his
organization with that of another. When this ensues "permanence of
race" will cease and give place to variations of any or of all sorts.
Some families are remarkable during long periods for tall and
handsome figures and striking regularity of features, while in others a
less perfect form, or some peculiar deformity reappears with equal
constancy. A family in Yorkshire is known for several generations to
have been furnished with six fingers and toes. A family possessing the
same peculiarity resides in the valley of the Kennebec, and the same
has reappeared in one or more other families connected with it by
marriage.
The thick upper lip of the imperial house of Austria, introduced by the
marriage of the Emperor Maximillian with Mary of Burgundy, has
been a marked feature in that family for hundreds of years, and is,
visible in their descendants to this day. Equally noticeable is the
"Bourbon nose" in the former reigning family of France. All the Barons
de Vessins had a peculiar mark between their shoulders, and it is said
that by means of it a posthumous son of a late Baron de Vessins was
discovered in a London shoemaker's apprentice. Haller cites the case of
a family where an external tumor was transmitted from father to son
which always swelled when the atmosphere was moist.
A remarkable example of a singular organic peculiarity and of its
transmission to descendants, is furnished in the case of the English
family of "Porcupine men," so called from having all the body except
the head and face, and the soles and palms, covered with hard
dark-colored excrescences of a horny nature. The first of these was
Edward Lambert, born in Suffolk in 1718, and exhibited before the
Royal Society when fourteen years of age. The other children of his
parents were naturally formed; and Edward, aside from this peculiarity,

was good looking and enjoyed good health. He afterward had six
children, all of whom inherited the same formation, as did also several
grand-children.
Numerous instances are on record tending to show that even accidents
do sometimes, although not usually, become hereditary. Blumenbach
mentions the case of a man whose little finger was crushed and twisted
by an accident to his right hand. His sons inherited right hands with the
little finger distorted. A bitch had her hinder parts paralyzed for some
days by a blow. Six of her seven pups were deformed, or so weak in
their hinder parts that they were drowned as useless. A pregnant cat got
her tail injured; in each of her five kittens the tail was distorted, and
had an enlargement or knob near the end of each. Horses marked
during successive generations with red-hot irons in the same place,
transmit visible traces of such marks to their colts.
Very curious are the facts which go to show that acquired habits
sometimes become hereditary. Pritchard, in his "Natural History of
Man," says that the horses bred on the table lands of the Cordilleras
"are carefully taught a peculiar pace which is a sort of running amble;"
that after a few generations this pace becomes a natural one; young
untrained horses adopting it without compulsion. But a still more
curious fact is, that if these domesticated stallions breed with mares of
the wild herd, which abound in the surrounding plains, they "become
the sires of a race in which the ambling pace is natural and requires no
teaching."
Mr. T.A. Knight, in a paper read before the Royal Society, says, "the
hereditary propensities of the offspring of Norwegian ponies, whether
full or half-bred, are very singular. Their ancestors have been in the
habit of obeying the voice of their riders and not the bridle; and
horse-breakers complain that it is impossible to produce this last habit
in the young colts. They are, however, exceedingly docile and obedient
when they understand the commands of their masters."
A late writer in one of the foreign journals, says that he had a "pup
taken from its mother at six weeks old, who although never taught to
'beg' (an accomplishment his mother had been taught) spontaneously

took to begging for every thing he wanted when about seven or eight
months old; he would beg for food, beg to be let out