Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics; or, Lamarck Vindicated

In 1617 William Jones, in warning his readers, related the tale of a pregnant woman given to wearing ruffs. Afterwards she gave birth to a child with 'a peece of flesh of two fingers thicke round about, the flesh being wonderfully curled like a Gentlewomans attire'.

—Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (New York: Berg, 2003), 130.

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