Consumption,--that dread foe of modern life,--is the most frequently encountered of all affections as the result of inherited predisposition. Indeed some of the most eminent physicians have believed it is never produced in any other way. Heart disease, disease of the throat, excessive obesity, affections of the skin, asthma, disorders of the brain and nervous system, gout, rheumatism, and cancer, are all hereditary. A tendency to bleed frequently, profusely and uncontrollably, from trifling wounds, is often met with as a family affection. The inheritance of diseased conditions is also _influenced by the sex_. A parent may transmit disease exclusively to children of the same sex, or exclusively to those of the opposite sex. Thus, a horn-like projection on the skin peculiar to the Lambert family was transmitted from the father to his sons and grandsons alone. So mothers have through several generations transmitted to their daughters alone supernumerary fingers, color-blindness, and other deformities and diseases. As a general rule, any disease acquired during the life of either parent, strongly tends to be inherited by the offspring of the same sex rather than the opposite. We have spoken of the apparently reverse tendency in regard to the transmission of genius and talent. ARE MUTILATIONS INHERITABLE? How, it may be inquired, is it in regard to the inheritance of parts mutilated and altered by injuries and disease during the life of either parent? In some cases mutilations have been practised for many generations, without any inherited result. Different races of men have knocked out their upper teeth, cut off the joints of their fingers, made immense holes through their ears and nostrils, and deep gashes in various parts of their bodies, and yet there is no reason for supposing that these mutilations have been inherited. The _Comprachicos_, a hideous and strange association of men and women, existed in the seventeenth century, whose business it was to buy children and make of them monsters. Victor Hugo, in a recent work, has graphically told how they took a face and made of it a snout, how they bent down growth, kneaded the physiognomy, distorted the eyes, and in other ways disfigured 'the human form divine,' in order to make fantastic playthings for the amusement of the noble-born. But history does not state that these deformities were inherited; certainly no race of monsters has resulted. The pits from small-pox are not inherited, though many successive generations must have been thus pitted by that disease before the beneficent discovery of the immortal Jenner. Children born with scars left by pustules have had small-pox in the womb, acquired through the system of the mother. On the other hand, the lower animals, cats, dogs, and horses, which have had their tails and legs artificially altered or injured, have produced offspring with the same condition of parts. A man who had his little finger on the right hand almost cut off,