HEREDITARY POSSIBILITIES

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1847, 31 July 1907, Page 31

HEREDITARY POSSIBILITIES

FAMOUS INSTANCES OF PLURAL BIRTHS. Discussing the fortune or otherwise of Mr Ellis Davies, M.P., whose wife recently bore him three sons at a birth, an English journalist says : No one wants to discourage Mr Davies, whose colleagues in the House are, so it is said, going to present him with a. testimonial in honour of the event. But it is, nevertheless, a fact that these multiple births run in families. There have, for example, been at least five recorded instances of triplicate births extending over two or more generations, and one of quadruplicate; while, on the very same day that saw the news of Mr Davies' good fortune recorded in the papers, there appeared also a paragraph announcing that on the occasion of the celebration of the eightieth birthday of Mr Edward Lemon, of Glen Hill, Sturminster, there were present That gentleman's triplet great-grand-nephews and his twin great-grand-nieces. Perhaps, however, the most remarkable instance in point is that known in obstetrical annals as the Gravata case. A peasant girl of Tuscany, named Gravata, the twin daughter of a woman who was herself one of triplets, married a man of her own class. She led off modestly, so to speak, with a single baby, a girL On the next occasion, however, she kept up the family reputation by presenting her husband with six male babies, small, but healthy. Next year came five more little brothers, followed by a couple of triplets and a quartette. Afterwards ensued a long procession of ones and twos, winding up with four boys, the last accession bringing the number of her living children up to sixty-two.