mber of
generations in a very isolated place and was restored to
five-fingeredness when an increase in the populousness of the district
permitted a wider selection in the matter of marriages.

And similarly, not long ago an account was published of an albino race
somewhere in Canada which had acquired a special name.

Perhaps it has been wiped out by this time by wider marriages, though
these might be effected with greater difficulty by albinos than by
six-fingered persons. At any rate no one can doubt that it might at any
time be wiped out by such marriages, though even when apparently wiped
out, sporadic cases might be expected to occur: what the breeders call
"throws-back," when they see an animal which resembles some ancestor
further back in the line of descent than its actual progenitors.
Certainly the most remarkable instance of the reliance which we have
come to feel respecting this matter of inheritance is that which was
afforded by a recent case of disputed paternity interesting on both
sides of the Atlantic, since the events in dispute occurred in America
and the property and the dispute concerning it were in England.

It was obviously a most difficult and disputable case, but the judge, a
shrewd observer, noticed, when the putative father was in the box, a
feature in his countenance which seemed closely to resemble what was to
be seen in the child which he claimed to be his own. A careful
examination of the parents and of the child was made by an eminent
sculptor, accustomed to minute observation of small features of variety
in those sitting to him as models.

He reported and showed to the court that there were remarkable features
in the head of the child which resembled, on the one hand an unusual
configuration in the mother--or the woman who claimed to be the
mother--and on the other a well-marked feature in her husband. And as a
result the father and mother won their case, and were proclaimed the
parents of the child because of the resemblance of these features; and,
if we think for a moment, we shall see, because also of the reliance
which the human race has come to place in the fidelity of inheritance,
of its perfect certainty, so to speak, that a duck will not come out of
a hen's egg, and the fact of this reliance on a generally received truth
remains, whatever may be said as to the legal aspect of such evidence.

Inheritance is a fact recognised by everybody, and the only reason why
we refuse to w