appearance of additional digits in unaffected families are much more
frequent than cases of inheritance. Many other deviations of structure,
of a nature almost as anomalous as supernumerary digits, such as
deficient phalanges, thickened joints, crooked fingers, &c., are in
like manner strongly inherited, and are equally subject to intermission
with reversion, though in such cases there is no reason to suppose that
both parents had been similarly affected.[29]
{14}
Additional digits have been observed in negroes as well as in other
races of man, and in several of the lower animals. Six toes have been
described on the hind feet of the newt (_Salamandra cristata_), and, as
it is said, of the frog. It deserves notice from what follows, that the
six-toed newt, though adult, had preserved some of its larval
characters; for part of the hyoidal apparatus, which is properly
absorbed during the act of metamorphosis, was retained. In the dog, six
toes on the hinder feet have been transmitted through three
generations; and I have heard of a race of six-toed cats. In several
breeds of the fowl the hinder toe is double, and is generally
transmitted truly, as is well shown when Dorkings are crossed with
common four-toed breeds.[30] With animals which have properly less than
five digits, the number is sometimes increased to five, especially in
the front legs, though rarely carried beyond that number; but this is
due to the development of a digit already existing in a more or less
rudimentary state. Thus the dog has properly four toes behind, but in
the larger breeds a fifth toe is commonly, though not perfectly,
developed. Horses, which properly have one toe alone fully developed
with rudiments of the others, have been described with each foot
bearing two or three small separate hoofs: analogous facts have been
noticed with sheep, goats, and pigs.[31]
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