one hand and the incredulity of science on the other. If in the love of the marvelous, the people have strangely dis- torted the facts, science has even refused to admit the facts themselves. "We readily conceive the influence upon the offspring of "longings" on the part of the mother in "marking" her child with the impression of a grape, a fig, a strawberry, or a peach, but we cannot conceive how those parts of the body already formed, can undergo a change or destruction under the influence of any emotions however vivid. So we can believe that certain portions of the skin may resemble that of the animal which has frightened the mother; we cannot believe that the limbs and features of the animal can be substituted for those of the 'Tiuman form divine." The emotion of fear and of other violent impressions may cause those "arrests of development" which occasion monstrosities, nearly all of which defects are found in the middle line of the body. Such are the hare-lip, the cleft palate, the spina hifldu, the divided cranium, the lack of separation of the eyes, etc. These occurrences are anything but marvelous when it is con- sidered that in the development of the foetus the median line is the point which is perfected the last, and that the least obstacle to the junction of the two halves of the body, may occasion these abnormal conditions.
A singular result of married life has, it seems to us, scarcely attracted the attention it deserves, and yet it is of common observation. We allude to a certain degree of mutual resemblance of feature and expression which parties long married acquire. There is evidently something more than mere coincidence in this resemblance, since it is so often remarked, and usually develops only with time. In reality, there is nothing surprising in the fact as the influ- ence of the emotions upon the physiognomy is so well
