Note 55 — INHERITED INJURIES.

Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, i. 467-469. Lost toes were only seen by Dr. Dupuy in three young out of two hundred. Obersteiner found that most of the offspring of his epileptic guinea-pigs were injuriously affected, being weakly, small, paralysed in one or more limbs, and so forth. Only two were epileptic, and both were weakly and died early (Weismann's Essays, p. 311). A morbid condition of the spinal cord might affect the hind limbs especially (as in paraplegia) and might occasionally cause loss of toes in the embryo by preventing development or by ulceration. Brown-Séquard does not say that the defective feet were on the same side as in the parents (Lancet, Jan., 1875, pp. 7, 8).