lower classes in the country often suffer as little from childbirth as those of any other race. Analogous differences, from the like causes, may be seen in the animal kingdom. Cows kept in towns, and other animals deprived of their healthful exercise, and accustomed to unnatural food and habits, often have difficult labours, and suffer much in parturition."-Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man, vol. ii. p. 190; Lond. 1822.

Among the Araucanian Indians of South America, "a mother, immediately on her delivery, takes her child, and going down to the nearest stream of water, washes herself and it, and returns to the usual labours of her station."-Stevenson's Twenty Years' Residence in South America, vol. i. p. 9.

No. V.-HEREDITARY DESCENT OF NATIONAL PHYSIOGNOMY.

Text, p. 140.

National features descend unchanged through many centuries, as is shown by Dr W. C. Edwards, in his work on The Physiological Characters of Races of Mankind considered in their relations to History (Paris, 1829). An excellent abstract of this work, by the late Dr William Gregory, may be seen in the Phrenological Journal, vol. ix. p. 97. Dr Edwards has adduced the Jews as an example. 66 In the first place, Jews in all countries resemble each other, and differ from the people among whom they live. Secondly, at distant periods they had the same external characters. In the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, this painter, who was an excellent naturalist and close observer, has painted faces which might be portraits of living Jews. This was 300 years ago; but we have evidence that 3000 years ago the Jews had the same characters.

"In the copy of the paintings adorning the tomb of an Egyptian king, exhibited in London about ten years ago, there are representations of four different races in procession:-1st, The natives, very numerous, of a dark brown tint, but without the woolly hair of the Negro; 2d, Negroes, with the black skin, thick lips, and woolly hair of that race; 3d, Persians; and, 4th, Jews, distinguished, says Belzoni, by their complexion and physiognomy. Dr Edwards says, 'I had seen, on the previous day, Jews in the streets of London; I thought that I now saw their portraits.""

Ι

No. VI. HEREDITARY COMPLEXION.

Text, p. 147.

Mr W. B. Stevenson, in his Narrative of Twenty Years' Residence in South America, vol. i. p. 286, says that he has "always remarked, that in cases where parents are of different castes, the child receives

X

more of the colour of the father than of the mother." He made extensive observations during a long residence in Lima; a place, he remarks, than which there cannot be any more favourable for an examination of the influence of the configuration of the human face, or of its colour, on the intellectual faculties. He gives the following Table, showing the mixture of the different castes, under their common or distinguishing names. But "this table," says he, "which I have endeavoured to make as correct as possible from personal observation, must be considered as general, and not including particular cases."

NO. VII.-HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION OF QUALITIES.

Text, p. 150.

Fortified by the observations made at the commencement of the second section of Chapter V., I venture to cite some additional authorities, and to record some further facts, observed by myself or

communicated by persons on whose accuracy reliance may be placed,

in support of the doctrine of the transmission of qualities by hereditary descent.

"The advice which I am now about to give," says Plutarch, "is indeed no other than what hath been given by those who have undertaken this argument before me. You will ask me, what is that? 'Tis this, that no man keep company with his wife for issue sake but when he is sober-as not having before either drunk any wine, or, at least, not to such a quantity as to distemper him; for they usually prove winebibbers and drunkards whose parents begot them when they were drunk: wherefore Diogenes said to a stripling somewhat crack-brained and half-witted, Surely, young man, thy father begot thee when he was drunk."-Plutarch's Morals, English transl., vol. i. p. 2; London, 1718.

It is remarked by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, that "if a drunken man gets a child, it will never, likely, have a good brain."

The passion for intoxicating liquors is sometimes hereditary. Dr Gall mentions a Russian family, in which the father and grandfather fell victims in early life to their propensity to drunkenness. The son, although he foresaw the consequences of this pernicious habit, continued to abandon himself to it, in spite of every resolution to the contrary; and the grandson, who was only five years of age when Dr Gall wrote, displayed even then a most decided inclination for spirituous liquors. (Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, i. 410.) As these facts can hardly be explained by the influence of example, it follows that a peculiar state of the organism, giving rise to the mental peculiarity, was in this case transmitted from one generation to another. In point of fact, Dr Caldwell has shown much reason for considering the irresistible desire for intoxicating liquors as a symptom of cerebral disease, having its special seat probably in the organ of alimentiveness. As long as this disease exists, the desire is strongly felt, and every appeal to the understanding of the repentant and unhappy patient is in vain. "Am I asked," says Dr Caldwell, "how drunkenness then is to be cured, and the tormenting propensity which leads to it eradicated? I answer, by the same means which are found successful in the treatment of other forms of insanity, where the cerebral excitement is preternaturally high. These are, seclusion and tranquillity, bleeding, puking, purging, cold water, and low diet. In this prescription I am serious; and

if it be opportunely adopted and resolutely persevered in, I freely peril my reputation on its success. If interrogated on the subject, the resident physician of the Kentucky Lunatic Asylum will state that he finds, in the institution he superintends, no difficulty in curing_mania a potu by the treatment here directed."Transylvania Journal of Medicine, for July 1832, pp. 332-3, see also Phren. Jour., vol. viii. p. 624. Dr Caldwell admits, however, that it is only recent and acute cases which can be speedily cured; those of long standing are much less tractable, and occasionally the disease may be found incurable. He thinks, very justly, that nothing would tend more to diminish the prevalence of habitual drunkenness, than to have it deemed and proclaimed a form of madness, and dealt with accordingly. Hospitals erected for the reception of drunkards, and authority given to confine them there, would be among the most important institutions that could be established, and would effect an immense saving of life, health, property and reputation. In regard to the hereditary transmission of this miserable tendency, Dr Caldwell observes :-"Every constitutional quality, whether good or bad, may descend, by inheritance, from parent to child. And a long continued habit of drunkenness becomes as essentially constitutional, as a predisposition to gout or pulmonary consumption. This increases, in a manifold degree, the responsibility of parents in relation to temperance. By habits of intemperance, they not only degrade and ruin themselves, but transmit the elements of like degradation and ruin to their posterity. This is no visionary conjecture, the fruit of a favourite and longcherished theory. It is a settled belief resulting from observation -an inference derived from innumerable facts. In hundreds and thousands of instances, parents, having had children born to them while their habits were temperate, have become afterwards intemperate, and had other children subsequently born. In such cases, it is a matter of notoriety, that the younger children have become addicted to the practice of intoxication much more frequently than the elder-in the proportion of five to one. Let me not be told that this is owing to the younger children being neglected, and having corrupt and seducing examples constantly before them. The same neglects and profligate examples have been extended to all; yet all have not been equally injured by them. The children of the earlier births have escaped, while those of the subsequent ones have suffered. The reason is plain. The latter children had a deeper animal taint than the former."-Transylvania Journal, pp. 341-2.

The following case is recorded in the Phrenological Journal:I now proceed to give some facts strongly illustrative of the doctrine, that the faculties which predominate in power and activity in the parents, when the organic existence of the child commences, determine its future mental dispositions. This is a doctrine to

which, from its great practical importance, I would beg leave to call your serious attention. It was remarked by the celebrated Esquirol, 'that the children whose existence dated from the horrors of the first French Revolution, turned out to be weak, nervous, and irritable in mind, extremely susceptible of impressions, and liable to be thrown by the least extraordinary excitement into absolute insanity.' Sometimes, too, family calamities produce serious effects upon the offspring. A very intelligent and respectable mother, upon hearing this principle expounded, remarked, that there was a very wide difference in the intellectual and moral development between one of her children and the others; and accounted for this difference by the fact, that, during pregnancy, she received intelligence that the crew of the ship, on board of which was her son, had mutinied that when the ship arrived in the West Indies, some of the mutineers, and also her son, had been put in irons—and that they were all to be sent home for trial. This intelligence acted so strongly upon her, that she suffered a temporary alienation of judgment. The report turned out to be erroneous, but this did not avert the consequences of the agitated state of the mother's feelings upon the daughter she afterwards gave birth to. That daughter is now a woman, but she is, and will continue to be, a being of impulses, incapable of reflection, and in other respects greatly inferior to her sisters."-Vol. viii. p. 471.

Shakspeare seems to recognise the law of the transmission of temporary mental qualities

"Come on, ye cowards; ye were got in fear,

Though ye were born in Rome."

Coriolanus, Act i., Sc. 6.

A gentleman, who has paid much attention to the rearing of horses, informed me that the male racehorse, when excited, but not exhausted, by running, has been found by experience to be in the most favourable condition for transmitting swiftness and vivacity to his offspring. Another gentleman stated, that he was himself present when the pale gray colour of a male horse was objected to; that the groom thereupon presented before the eyes of the male another female from the stable, of a very particular but pleasing variety of colours, asserting that the latter would determine the complexion of the offspring; and that in point of fact it did so. The experiment was tried in the case of a second female, and the result was so completely the same, that the two young horses, in point of colour, could scarcely be distinguished, although their spots were extremely uncommon. The account of Laban and the peeled rods laid before the cattle to produce spotted calves, is an example of the same kind.

The subjoined observations are extracted from Outlines of the Veterinary Art, by Dalabere Blaine, 3d edition, p. 327; London,