The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1886-11-27
Hereditary EntaiIment of Pecu.
liarities.
N. Y. Farmer.

DR.. Manly Miles, in his excellent
work on stock breeding, gives number
of cases where accidental deformities
become perpetuated in the progeny;
one of man with singular elongation
of the upper eyelid, whose seven or eight
children in family of ten had the same
deformity; of man having an extra
finger on one hand, whose progeny were
similarly affected, the extra digits ap-
pearing on both hands and on the feet
OF the second and third generation, and
on all four of the extremitieS in the
fourth; of ram in Germany having
ears OF not more than one-quarter the
usual size, impairing the popularity to
sub-family, members OF which appear
ed in the United States between 1924
and 1898, one came to New York State,
and his owner David Ely bred flock
from him with the ears almost entirely
bred off; of a family of short-legged
sheep produced from a ram born with
abnormally short legs; of hornless
bull produced in Paraguay, which has
been the progenitor of race of hornless
cattle that has since multiplied exten-
sively in that country; of families of
one-eared rabbits bred from parents that
accidental lost an ear, and of families
of pigs that became tailless soon after
birth.
A DR.. Coventry of Edinburgh reports
having cat that was perfect at birth,
bur lost her tail by accident when young.
She afterwards had many litters of kit
tens, and in every one of these there
was one or more of the litter that wanted
the tail either in whole or in part. Prof.
Miles says it is stated on good authority
that animals that have been branded
in the same place for several successive
generations, transmit the same mark
to their offspring. In some of the in
stances given by Di. Miles the peculiar
tiles of bodily deformity appear to have
been transmitted nearly or quite as read
lily, and as surely, through the mother
as through the father.
Turning over few pages in the same
number OF WaLlaee's Monthly, from
which we have quoted above, we find
two cases given where injuries have been
transmitted in a remarkable manner.
The first the case of ram that got a
grasS-seed into the corner of one of his
eyes which caused much inflammation and
enlargement. In this condition he was
turned with the ewes and became the
sire of thirty-four lambs, twenty-seven
of which were defective in the left eye
Just as the sire was. The second case
was that of bitch that had one eye so
severely injured that she became blind
in that eye. Her first litter of pups
born while the socket of the eye was
sore, were nearly all blind of the same
eye as the one injured in the mother.
The second litter had fewer affected,
and after the eye was entirely healed her
pups came with perfect eyes. Mr.. Wal
lace we'll remarks, I'VE can learn anew
from these two instances how little we
know of the secrets of the womb
We may add in this connection that
Maj. Henry E. Alvord has made pub
lie statement that he has known a herd
of horned cattle to be changed to polls
by persistent removal of the incipient
horns from the heads of the calves. The
proportional number of permanently
polled calves increased with each gener-
alton till the herd became practically
hornless family. Secretary Russell also
states that our bald headed sheep origi-
nally all had horns, while now horns are
only found on the rams.