nce of diabetes
in three brothers under ten years old; he also remarks that children of the
same family often exhibit in common infantile diseases the same peculiar
symptoms. My father mentioned to me the case of four brothers who died
between the ages of sixty and seventy, in the same highly peculiar comatose
state. An instance has been already given of supernumerary digits appearing
in four children out of six in a previously unaffected family. Dr. Devay
states[41] that two brothers married two sisters, their first-cousins, none
of the four nor any relation being an albino; but the seven children
produced from this double marriage were all perfect albinoes. Some of these
cases, as Mr. Sedgwick[42] has shown, are probably the result of reversion
to a remote ancestor, of whom no record had been preserved; and all these
cases are so far directly connected with inheritance that no doubt the
children inherited a similar constitution from their parents, and, from
being exposed to nearly similar conditions of life, it is not surprising
that they should be affected in the same manner and at the same period of
life.

* * * * *

Most of the facts hitherto given have served to illustrate the force of
inheritance, but we must now consider cases, grouped as well as the subject
allows into classes, showing how feeble, capricious, or deficient the power
of inheritance sometimes is. When a new peculiarity first appears, we can
never predict whether it will be inherited. If both parents from their
birth present {18} the same peculiarity, the probability is strong that it
will be transmitted to at least some of their offspring. We have seen that
variegation is transmitted much more feebly by seed from a branch which had
become variegated through bud-variation, than from plants which were
variegated as seedlings. With most plants the power of transmission
notoriously depends on some innate capacity in the individual: thus
Vilmorin[43] raised from a peculiarly coloured balsam some seedlings, which
all resembled their parent; but of these seedlings some failed to transmit
the new character, whilst others transmitted it to all their descendants
during several successive generations. So again with a variety of the rose,
two plants alone out of six were found by Vilmorin to be capable of
transmitting the desired character.

The weeping or pendulous growth of trees is strongly inherited in some
cases,