blood of good alloy, will produce another generation which shall be altogether irreproachable; for the propensity to hereditary maladies ends by exhausting itself. Stahl, Bor- deu, Buchan, Pujol, Baumes, Gintrac, and P. Lucas think thus. Unhappily, physicians are not consulted in the com- position of laws, and nothing is stipulated in our codes in favor of the physical amelioration of the human race, save the limitation of marriage to certain degrees of consan- guinity, and the epoch of legal nubility."^^
It is a matter of common observation, that parents com- municate to their descendants a more or less striking re- semblance in organization, which often extends even to the moral and intellectual qualities. It is this which con- stitutes the fact of inJieritance. "Indeed," says M. Levy, ^^ "inheritance shows itself in man both in his general form and in the relative proportion of its parts. It is mani- fested by the intimate properties of the organic fibre, if one may use that expression ; motions, attractions, features, tone of voice, functional peculiarities, all testify to the lively relation which is continued between the product and its producer, even after the separation of the new being, who, emancipated from uterine incubation, is be- yond the reach of its individuality. We do not say that procreative beings exactly repeat themselves in their pro- geny, but they impress upon it, with life, a portion of the particular direction that life has taken with them. That which appears most obviously to have been transmitted from the parents to the child is the physical type, the external conformation, the physiognomy, the form, the color." There were Eoman families called Nasones, Lobe- ones, from the salient feature which denoted the hereditary influence. Temperament, idiosyncrasies, general charac- teristics of the organism, are all transmitted, equally with
