nt.] ORIGIN OF TASTE FOR SCIENCE. 197
tion to be 1 case of inheritance to 4 that are not inherited from either parent. There is no case in which the correspondent speaks of having inherited a love of science from his mother, though, of course, she may, and probably has, often transmitted it from a grand-parent. I have a curious case among the returns sent to me of a passion for heraldry characterising a great-nephew and a great-uncle, the latter of whom had died before the former was born. I have another of an eminent statistician, in whom a love of figures and tabulation was highly characteristic of his grand-parent and is very strongly marked in himself, but was wholly absent in his parent and all other known members of his small family. There have been numerous and most curious cases of a love of figures and tabulation in my own family, which richly deserve a full description. It was carried to so strange an extravagance by one of its members, a lady now deceased, that I can do no sufficient justice to her peculiarities by speaking in general terms ; I ought to give pages of anecdote.
