OCR Rendition - approximate

100   Inquiries into Human Faculty

the century.’ The growth of So was sudden, and has remained constant ever since.

This is the only case known to me of a new stage in the development of a Number-Form being suddenly attained.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATE III.

Plate III. is intended to exhibit some instances of heredity. I have no less than twenty-two families in which this curious tendency is hereditary, and there may be many more of which I am still ignorant. I have found it to extend in at least eight of these beyond the near degrees of parent and child, and brother and sister. Considering that the occurrence is so rare as to exist in only about one in every twenty-five or thirty males, these results are very remarkable, and their trustworthiness is increased by the fact that the hereditary tendency is on the whole the strongest in those cases where the Number-Forms are the most defined and elaborate. I give four instances in which the hereditary tendency is found, not only in having a Form at all, but also in some degree in the shape of the Form.

Figs. 46-49 are those of various members of the Henslow family, where the brothers, sisters, and some children of a sister have the peculiarity.

Figs. 53—54 are those of a master of Cheltenham College and his sister.

Figs. 55—56 are those of a father and son; 57 and 58 belong to the same family.

Figs. 59—60 are those of a brother and sister.

The lower half of the Plate explains itself. The last figure of all, Fig. 65, is of interest, because it was drawn for an intelligent little girl of only 11 years old, after she had been closely questioned by the father, and it was accompanied by elaborate coloured illustrations of months and days of the week. I thought this would be a good test case, so I let the matter drop for two years, and then begged the father to question the child casually, and to send me a fresh account. I asked at the same time if any notes had been kept of the previous letter. Nothing could have come out more satisfactorily. No notes had been kept; the subject