A distinction must here be drawn between hereditary transmission and the possession of qualities at birth, which have not been the result of any impression received from the system of father or mother, but due to mental influences or accidents operating through the mother. A child may be born idiotic or deformed, not because either parent or one of its ancestors was thus affected, but from the influence of some severe mental shock received by the mother during her pregnancy. This subject of maternal impressions will come up for separate consideration in the discussion of pregnancy. Again, a child may be epileptic, although there is no epilepsy in the family, simply because of the intoxication of the father or mother at the time of the intercourse resulting in conception. Such cases are not due to hereditary transmission, for that cannot be hereditary which has been possessed by neither the parents nor any other relatives. In considering the effects of inheritance, we will first pass in review those connected with the physical constitution. These are exceedingly common and universally known. Fortunately, not merely are evil qualities inherited, but beauty, health, vigor, and longevity also. BEAUTY. Good looks are characteristic of certain families. Alcibiades, the handsomest among the Grecians of his time, descended from ancestors remarkable for their beauty. So well and long has the desirable influence of inheritance in this respect been recognised, that there existed in Crete an ancient law which ordained that each year the most beautiful among the young men and women should be chosen and forced to marry, in order to perpetuate the type of their beauty. Irregularities of feature are transmitted from parent to child through many generations. The aquiline nose has existed some centuries, and is yet hereditary in the Bourbon family. The hereditary under-lip of the House of Hapsburg is another example. When the poet Savage speaks of 'The tenth transmitter of a foolish face,' he scarcely exaggerates what is often seen in families where some strongly-marked feature or expression is long predominant or reappears in successive generations. NECK AND LIMBS. The form and length of the neck and limbs are frequently hereditary, as is also the height of the body. The union of two tall persons engenders tall children. The father of Frederick the Great secured for himself a regiment of men of gigantic stature, by permitting the marriage of his guards only with women of similar height. A tendency to obesity often appears in generation after generation of a family. Yet such cases are within the reach of medical art. COMPLEXION.