170 NATURAL INHERITANCE. [CIAr.
the one of an obvious hereditary tendency to disease and the other of the reverse. There are far too many striking instances of coincidence between the diseases of the parents and of the children to admit of reasonable doubt of their being often inherited. On the other hand, when I hide with my hand the lower part of a page such as those in Tables A and B, and endeavour to make a forecast of what I shall find under my hand after studying the upper portion, I am sometimes greatly mistaken. Very unpromising marriages have occasionally led to good results, especially where the parental disease is one that usually breaks out late in life, as in the case of cancer. The children may then enjoy a fair length of days and die in the end of some other disease ; although if that disease had been staved off it is quite possible that the cancer would ultimately have appeared. I have two remarkable instances of this. In one of them, three grandparents out of four died of cancer. In each of the fraternities of which the father and mother were members, one and one person only, died of it. As to the children, although four of them have lived to past seventy years, not one has shown any sign of cancer. The other case differs in details, but is equally remarkable. However diseased the parents may be, it is of course possible that the children may inherit the healthier constitutions of their remoter ancestry. Promising looking marriages are occasionally found to lead to a sickly progeny, but my materials are too scanty to permit of a thorough investigation of these cases.
The general conclusion thus far is, that owing to
