mely, 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. Carlisle[14]
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 vibrissae 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 {9} 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