CURIOUS EXAMPLE OF HEREDITY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 6 May 1912, Page 3

CURIOUS EXAMPLE OF HEREDITY.

In the village of Koshilovo, writes Reuters St. Petersburg correspondent, there are over fifty peasants who have more than the usual number of fingers. According to interesting particulars published in the Novoe Vremya, they are all descendants of a peasant who married in the first half of last century, and who had extra fingers on one of his hands. . In the present generation this abnormality is reproduced to the extent of two, three, four, and five additional fingers. Some cases simply show a thumb" duplicated from the first joint. As the result of intermarriage the deformity is spreading to neighboring villages. It dispenses the young men from military service, however sound they may be constitutional^.