asserts[61] that in
Germany Jews are often born in a condition rendering circumcision
difficult, so that a name is here applied to them signifying "born
circumcised." The oak and other trees must have borne galls from primeval
times, yet they do not produce inherited excrescences; many other such
facts could be adduced.

On the other hand, various cases have been recorded of cats, dogs, and
horses, which have had their tails, legs, &c., amputated or injured,
producing offspring with the same parts ill-formed; but as it is not at all
rare for similar malformations to appear spontaneously, all such cases may
be due to mere coincidence. Nevertheless, Dr. Prosper Lucas has given, on
good authorities, such a long list of inherited injuries, that it is
difficult not to believe in them. Thus, a cow that had lost a horn from an
accident with consequent suppuration, produced three calves which were
hornless on the same side of the head. With the horse, there seems hardly a
doubt that bony exostoses on the legs, caused by too much travelling on
hard roads, are inherited. Blumenbach records the case of a man who had his
little finger on the right hand almost cut off, and which in consequence
grew crooked, and his sons had the same finger on the same hand similarly
crooked. A soldier, fifteen years before his marriage, lost his left eye
from purulent ophthalmia, and his {24} two sons were microphthalmic on the
same side.[62] In all such cases, if truthfully reported, in which the
parent has had an organ injured on one side, and more than one child has
been born with the same organ affected on the same side, the chances
against mere coincidence are enormous. But perhaps the most remarkable and
trustworthy fact is that given by Dr. Brown-Sequard,[63] namely, that many
young guinea-pigs inherited an epileptic tendency from parents which had
been subjected to a particular operation, inducing in the course of a few
weeks a convulsive disease like epilepsy: and it should be especially noted
that this eminent physiologist bred a large number of guinea-pigs from
animals which had not been operated on, and not one of these manifested the
epileptic tendency. On the whole, we can hardly avoid admitting, that
injuries and mutilations, especially when followed by disease, or perhaps
exclusively when thus followed, are occasionally inherited.

Although many congenital monstrosities are inherited, of which examples
have already been given, and t