I am able in the photograph exhibited to show what appears to be an undoubted transmission of a very prominent form of nose from a grandmother to a grandson. The grandmother (on the right of the photograph, who is now over 80 years of age) was the wife of a gipsy and she herself came of gipsy stock. She and her husband eventually settled in a small village in the West of England. They had six children, namely, two sons and four daughters. Of the two sons, one was fair in complexion and had the "wild ways and habits of the gipsy." The other was dark in complexion and married an English countrywoman of the district in which his parents had settled. She was of fair complexion. They are shown, as husband and wife, in the left-hand corner of the central photograph. They have had four children, namely, three girls (shown in the centre of the photograph) and one son (shown standing by the right of his gipsy grandmother in the right corner of the photograph).
The gipsy grandmother has a very prominent type of nose. It is characterised by three chief features: First, the broad base on which the external narial apertures are lodged; second, the marked convexity of the contour of the bridge; third, the well-defined or sharp angularity of the general form. Her son's nose differs from hers in all three of these points. His wife's nose is of the more rounded type and differs very widely from that of the gipsy grandmother (her mother-in-law). The three girl children of these two parents clearly do not possess a nose like that of their grandmother. The two younger daughters appear to resemble their mother, while the oldest appears to be an intermediate between her mother and father. So far then there is no feature of any special interest.
But it is otherwise when we come to deal with the nose of the son (grandson of the old gipsy woman). For it resembles hers in all three of the marked features which give to her nose its distinctive and prominent form. The convexity of the bridge is, perhaps, not quite so pronounced, but then he is still young, and this is a feature likely to become accentuated with age.
Two features of Mendelian interest are shown in this group of a grandmother, two parents and four grandchildren. First, there is a hereditary transmission of nose type from grandmother to grandson. Second, there is a clean segregation of the nose type manifested by the brother, from the contrasted nose type or types exemplified by his three sisters. In addition, the case is interesting since it manifests segregation of characters in the offspring of parents of different races, _i.e._, a gipsy and a native of the West of England.
