presented by a hungry pack of lawyers, evidently wishing to infer (what he knew to be incorrect) that there was no intention of winding-up the Co. The question now was, who should be on the register? It was contended that Mr. Colbeck's name should be put on, but Mr. Lowe had nothing to do with Mr. Colbeck. There was no privity between them. Mr. Lowe sold his shares to Strange, and it was the duty of the Directors to register that transfer, and he should now order that the registry should be rectified, and Mr. Strange's name be placed on the list for the 50 shares in the place of Mr. Lowe's name. (Jan. 1870.)

In How's case (July, 1870) the question, which came by way of appeal from a decision of Vice-Chancellor Malins, was whether a Mr. How was to be included in the list of contributories of this Co. for 150 shares. In June, 1866, Mr. How, at the suggestion of Mr. Everitt, the Chairman of the Co., who was his brother-in-law, applied for the shares, and, instead of paying £300, the sum due on the allotment, he gave the Co. his promissory note for that amount, and deposited the certificates of the shares with the Co. as security. In Nov. 1867, he transferred the shares, with the consent of the Directors, to one John Raban, a man of no property, who was in receipt of weekly wages, and Raban gave the Co. a promissory note for the £300. How's note, however, remained with the Co., and they afterwards sued him upon it and recovered a verdict. The ViceChancellor hold that the transfer was a merely a colourable one, and that Mr. How must be on the list of contributories. From this order Mr. How appealed. Lord Justice James was of opinion that everything connected with this transfer was a mere sham, and that the trans. could not stand. Mr. How never really sold the shares when he trans. them to this man, who was in receipt of 7s. a week, nor did Raban ever intend to become the owner of the shares. How took the shares to oblige Mr. Everitt, his brotherin-law, and when How got tired of them Everitt found a pauper to sign a promissory note for the 300, and to accept a transfer of the shares. The whole thing was a mere sham, and could not stand for a moment. The appeal must be dismissed.

In 1874 Brunton's case arose on the following facts: Mr. John Sheridan was employed by the Directors of the Hercules to carry out the negociations with the International Life. For his services he was to receive the sum of £8000, £2000 in cash and £6000 in bonds. The bonds given to Mr. Sheridan were for £250 each, and bore the date of May 23, 1868, and by each of them the Co, was bound to Mr. Sheridan in the penal sum of £500, the condition being that if the Hercules Co. should pay to Mr. Sheridan, his executors, administrators, or assigns, on Nov. 15, 1869, the sum of £250, the bond should be void, with a proviso that that sum was to be charged upon and payable out of all the property of the Co. wherever situate, including the uncalled up cap. for the time being. In the autumn of 1868, Mr. Shrubb, who was the Sec. of the Hercules Co., was indebted to the present claimant, Mr. Brunton, and being liable to have execution issued against him, he procured an assignment to be made by Sheridan of one of his bonds to Brunton; and a formal assignment was accordingly made on Dec. 7, 1868. It did not appear that Brunton made any inquiry at the office of the Co. with regard to the bond; but five days after the assignment, Brunton's solicitor gave formal notice of the assignment at the office of the Co., and the officers of the Co. stamped the duplicate notice with the seal of the Co. as an acknowledgment that they had received it, although they did not register the assignment in the books of the Co., as it was their duty to have done. In the month of Jan. following, a resolution for a voluntary winding-up was passed by the Co., and in Feb. 1869, an order was made that the winding-up should be continued under the supervision of the Court. This winding-up was now practically accomplished, one of the only remaining questions being as to the validity of the bonds given to Mr. Sheridan when, as in the present instance, they had passed into the hands of an assignee for value, and this was chosen as a representative case. V. C. Malins, in delivering judgment, said: It was not in the real interest of public cos. that persons taking securities such as these should be bound to make all sorts of inquiries whether their original issue was ultra vires or not, and so on, and the result of a decision in favour of this Co. would have the prejudicial effect of making all this class of securities unmarketable. Mr. Brunton, as the holder of this bond for a valuable consideration, was an innocent party, and though the shareholders were innocent parties also, yet between the two, it was surely more just that they who had selected inefficient officers should rather be the sufferers. Therefore, in the view that the Co. had represented those bonds which were assignable in equity to be due from them, or had so conducted themselves by affixing their seal on the notice as to make their conduct equivalent to such a representation, they could not now dispute the bond. The liq. has been a most cruel one for the contributories; but the legal difficulties must have been very great. It was in 1878 complained that no bal.-sheet had been submitted to the contributories during the entire progress of the liq. During this year Mr. White was permitted to retire from the post of liq. on the ground of ill-health; and he soon afterwards died. Mr. James C. Benwell was appointed his successor. Dividends have been declared to the extent of 16s. in the £, with some prospect of a further payment. It will be instructive to know the entire costs of the proceeding.

Altogether the career of this Co. is one of the most remarkable of modern times, and hence the full details furnished.

HEREDITAMENTS.-Every kind of property that can be inherited: i.e. not only property which a person has by descent from his ancestors, but also that which he has by purchase, because his heir can inherit it from him. The two kinds of hereditaments are corporeal, that is tangible, the same as land; incorporeal, which are not tangible, and are the rights and profits annexed to or issuing out of land, as tithes, advowsons, franchises, etc., etc. The term hereditaments applies both to realty and personalty, but in a different mode of relation when applied to the former, it denotes the subject of property, apart from its nature and extent; when to the latter, it signifies some inheritable right of which the subject is susceptible. It is also used in a third sense to denote inheritable rights relating to land, or something issuing therefrom or exercisable therein; or having some local connexion or relation distinct from the enjoyment of the land itself.

Thus hereditaments divide themselves into real, personal, and mixed, and become applicable to all kinds of property-Wharton. HEREDITARY.-Descended by inheritance, or from an ancestor, as hereditary estate. Capable of descending from an ancestor to an heir; descendible to an heir-at-law. Transmitted or capable of being transmitted from a parent to a child. [HEIR.] HEREDITARY Co., FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PRESENT AND SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS.-An Asso. under this title was projected in Lond. in 1712: the articles of its proposed constitution being issued on the 18th Dec. in that year. Short title: Hereditary Co. on Lives. It was based very much upon the plan of the Amicable So., viz. that of an ann. distribution of certain funds among the nominees of the deceased members. A detailed account of the Co. will be given in our HIST. OF LIFE INS., this date. HEREDITARY DISEASES.-A term applied to diseases supposed to be transmitted from parents to their children; and such transmission is said to be due to hereditary predisposition. In extreme cases, in which all or several children exhibit a special liability to certain diseases, this liability is referred to family constitution. [ATAVISM, Supp.] These have been already considered from different aspects in different parts of this work-see FAMILY HIST.; also DISEASES, HEREDITARY, TRANSMISSION OF; and GOUT. But more remains to be said. Hippocrates evidently entertained a strong opinion as to the importance of hereditary influence. In his essay on the "Sacred disease" (termed by us epilepsy) he says:

Its origin is hereditary like that of other diseases. For if a phlegmatic person be born of a phlegmatic, and a bilious of a bilious, and a phthisical of a phthisical, and one having spleen disease of another having disease of the spleen, what is to hinder it from happening, that when the father and mother are subject to this disease, certain of their offspring should be so affected also? As the semen comes from all parts of the body, healthy particles will come from healthy parts, and unhealthy from unhealthy parts.

This was a practical way of looking at the question.

1860.-Mr. H. W. Porter, B.A., read before the Inst. of Act. a paper: On some Considerations suggested by the Ann. Rep. of the Reg.-Gen., being an Inquiry into the Question as to how far the Inordinate Mort. in this Country exhibited by those Reports is controllable by Human Agency, wherein he discussed with ability the subject of the hereditary transmission of phthisis. [CONSUMPTION.]

1861.-Dr. Brinton, M.D., in his treatise, On the Medical Selection of Lives for Assu. (3rd ed. p. 22), after some general obs. on family hist. already quoted [FAMILY HIST.], continues:

But it is obvious that the influence of an hereditary tendency to any such disease on the prospective duration of life, must depend (1) on the danger to life which the particular disease involves; and (2) on the degree on which its transmitted or congenital liability exceeds that risk which every individual runs of acquiring it. And the difficulty of exactly estimating these two points generally reduces our knowledge to little more than conjectures: which, however, have their great practical value, but have little scientific accuracy.

1865. Mr. John Mann, in his Medical Statistics of Life Assu., after discussing some of the topics which we have already noticed under title FAMILY HIST., proceeds (p. 87): But when we have arrived at this general conclusion of the importance of considering the hereditary element, another question arises as to the degree of importance which should apply to the case under consideration, according to the similarity of sex. In other words, when the diseased parent is the father, are the sons more likely than the daughters to be attacked? Vice versa, the same question applies to the mother.

The reply to these questions finds a solution in the Rep. of the Brompton Hospital for Consumption, 1849, wherein is given the following T.:

T. showing the Proportion of Consumptive Sons and Daughters to Consumptive Fathers and Mothers respectively:

Both father and mother were consumptive in the case of 12 males and 10 females. The brothers and sisters in add. to father and mother were consumptive in 4 males and 6

females. The results are remarkable: the father transmits consumptive disease to the sons in 59'4 p.c., to the daughters in only 43'5 p.c. The mother to the sons in 40·6 p.c., but to the daughters in 56'5 p.c. Thus the chances are not far from twice as great in the case of either parent, that the hereditary tendency will descend in the same sex as that of the diseased parent as that it will descend to the other sex.

Nor are these results confined to England. In a Table prepared from a Rep. of the New York State Lunatic Asylum (date not stated) a like test was applied as to Însanity : T. showing the Proportion of Insane Sons and Daughters to Insane Fathers and Mothers respectively-New York State.

Both parents were insane in the cases of males and 5 females. These T. (says Mr. Mann) are very interesting, as they point to the existence of a law whereby disease, in its transmission from one generation, is influenced by sex, and they give some notion of the degree in which this influence is practically realized. "We are

at present speaking of the Laws of Heredity in relation to Life Assu. but it is obvious that, considered in reference to marriage, and the formation of some other social contracts, it is hardly possible to rate too highly their importance, as affecting not one life only, but it may be, beclouding the future of successive generations" (p. 89).

1868.-Dr. W. A. Guy, M. B., F.R.S., in his Principles of Forensic Medicine (p. 139), says, in speaking of Family Hist. :

As a general rule it will not be necessary to extend the inquiry beyond the father and mother, and the brothers and sisters, if the answers regarding them prove favourable; but if these near relations have died early, or if they appear to be subject to some hereditary malady seriously affecting the duration of life, it may be necessary to include in the inquiry a larger circle of relationship.

1874.-Dr. Sieveking, M.D., in his well-written work, The Medical Adviser in Life Assu., says (p. 21):

For the purposes of Life Ins. it is necessary to determine the existence and the character of hereditary influence from three aspects. The evidence obtainable may be derived from preceding generations, from collaterals, and from descendants. It has been too much the custom to pay regard only to the vital power of progenitors; but important as this point is, we shall find, when discussing special morbid taints, that the health of collaterals offers very valuable indications as to the health of an insuree, which are not offered or not accessible when the former alone is examined. The condition of descendants, in the nature of things, does not so frequently assist in determining the health of their predecessors, because, though theoretically of similar import, the age of assurers generally militates against this element becoming an item in the calculation of their vital power. Apart from the actual health of the progenitors, physiological conditions come into play, that frequently determine the variability of their offspring, some of which at least are readily ascertainable. To these belong the relative ages of the parents at the time of insuree's birth. Great disparity of age is justly regarded as exercising a prejudicial influence, even though other points are favourable. Blood relationship again, which in this country is not a bar to marriage in degrees that physiologically are objectionable, leads to the production of sickly offspring which may not at the time of ins. have exhibited any failure of power, but which nevertheless would be less capable of resisting morbid influences to which they must sooner or later be subjected. It is this power of resisting disease, the vis insita, to which in all cases the medical referee's attention requires to be specially directed. The actual malady or morbid taint is comparatively easy of detection, but the gauge that is to test the insuree lies in the means of estimating his ability to undergo the heat and burden of active life, and to ward off or bear with impunity the noxious influences which he cannot altogether escape.

Again (p. 68):

The question presents itself to us under two aspects, which we would consider as direct and as indirect hereditariness. The former implies the conveyance of a definite morbid taint from one generation to another; under the latter we understand the production of constitutional peculiarities not traceable to actual disease, but due to accidental circumstances affecting the embryonic condition of the individual, and influencing his future development. Many of the data are extremely difficult to obtain; and fortunately for mankind it is also true that education and training may neutralize and divert the morbid impulse imparted to offspring; but the more the physician inquires into the private history of families, the more ground will he discover for his belief in the doctrine of hereditary influence. As yet, our knowledge on the subject is but very fragmentary, but is one that largely concerns the schoolmaster, the political economist, and the philanthropist, as well as the physician; and it is to be desired that some Hercules in science may arise before long, not only able to gather up all the disjecta membra, but also to give shape and precision to many views that still possess no firmer basis than that of vague hypothesis.

And finally (p. 84):

The hereditary taint shows itself in a marked manner in the various diseases referable to the nervecentres, but more in those which are connected with the brain than with the spinal cord. They are, however, with certain exceptions, chiefly the appanage of advanced life, and do not affect life ins. by any means in the same ratio as diseases of the thoracic and abdominal viscera. Thus apoplexy is most common between 60 and 70.

The hereditary taint often shows itself in the reproduction of brain disease of a different form from that in which it appeared in the ancestors-a marked correlation existing between apoplexy and its ally paralysis, epilepsy, hysteria, asthma and insanity. Epilepsy, which unfortunately occurs most frequently in early life, exhibits in a marked form the hereditary impress, as well as this correlation; though, like most other diseases, it may arise spontaneously from purely idiopathic causes. Insanity, again, belongs, to the morbid conditions in which the hereditary influence is strongly marked, though it does not appear largely to affect life ins. bus. Drs. Bucknill and Tuke tell us that, though acute insanity shortens life materially, the chronic form does not exhibit that tendency.