noticing the agencies calculated to vitiate the quality of the brain, we mentioned the neuropathies as among the most efficient, though their effect is chiefly witnessed in subsequent generations, and the present case is an illustration of the fact. His mother was a highly nervous woman, and for many years a confirmed invalid. This, then, being admitted, that a vitiated quality of the brain may be transmitted to the offspring with accumulating effect, let us see what are the general characteristics of this effect. We have no reason to suppose that the brain is exempt from the operation of the same organic laws which govern the rest of the animal economy. Observation abundantly shows that its working capacity is diminished, and its activity becomes irregular in one or more of the various degrees of irregularity, ranging from a little eccentricity up to raving mania. Occasionally, such defect is accompanied by remarkable manifestations of mental ability, but it is no part of our doctrine that such conjunctions are incompatible. Byron and Johnson accomplished great things; but who will deny that without that hereditary taint they would have done more and done it better? The latter, it is well known, was much dependent on moods, and spent long periods in mental inactivity. The labors of the other were fitful, and his views of life betray the influence of the same cerebral defect that led to so much domestic woe. The narrow-chested, round-shouldered person, whose lungs barely oxydize blood enough to maintain life, is not expected to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or to excel as a performer on wind-instruments. We impute to him no fault for this sort of incompetence. We should rather charge him with consummate folly, if he undertook a line of exercises for which he is so clearly unfitted. We do not wonder, in fact, when this unfortunate pulmonary constitution sends its possessor to an early grave. Why not apply the same philosophy to the brain, which may partake of all the defects incident to organized matter? Why expect of one among whose progenitors insanity, idiocy, scrofula, rickets, and epilepsy have prevailed in an extraordinary degree all the moral and intellectual excellences displayed by those whose blood through a long line of ancestors has been untainted by any of these affections?