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184 affect only the person who uses them, are not with-out their influence on posterity. --The process of nature in this, is as little known, as in all her other works: but the fact cannot have escaped the observation of those who have paid a careful attention to her operations. Every considerable change of co-lour, feature, or figure which as grown into a habit of the body, or indicates any important alteration in the general action of the system is liable to be trans-mitted, along with other constitutional properties, to offspring. The coarse features of laboring people, created by great hardships, and exposure to the injuries of the weather, we often see imparted. The broad feet of the rustic, spread out by often tread-ing the soil barefooted: and the large hand and arm, formed by constant labor, are often discernible in children. The increase, diminution or change of any other limbs, or features, resulting from arts, or national habits which aim at forming the person after any peculiar ideal model may, in any manner, [[footnote]] ciety ; and often in some unaccountable caprice : but, whether derived from the one source, or the other, they will ever have a powerful effect in forming the attitudes, the air, the compo-sition of the features, and the whole aspect of the person. [/footnote]] 185 became hereditary.* The inferior animals afford many examples to prove the existence of this natural law. The figure, the colour, and many other properties of the breed of horses are easily changed, by those who have skill in raising them, according to almost any reigning taste. And they are equally susceptible of deterioration by neglect, or by improper treatment. Out of the same original stock, the Germans, who are settled in Pennsylvania, raise large heavy horses for the draught; the Irish in the same state,by a different mode of treatment, raise such only as are much smaller, and lighter in their form. By competent skill, and the application or proper pains, or, on the other hand, by neglect, or ignorance, the races of all our domestic animals may be almost infinitely varied. Human nature being much more pliant than that of most other animals, and being af-fected by a much greater number of minute causes, according to the state of society in which men are placed, is susceptible, also of a much greater variety of changes from their operation. And among these [[footnote]] * Is this more difficult to be conceived, or less worthy of credit than that constitutional tendency to certain diseases which, it is now acknowledged by all physicians, may be rendered hereditary?
