Such things have been known to be
handed down through three generations; for instance, a certain man had
a mark on his arm which his son did not possess, but his grandson
had it in the same spot though not very distinct.
Such cases, however, are few; for the children of cripples are
mostly sound, and there is no hard and fast rule regarding them. While
children mostly resemble their parents or their ancestors, it
sometimes happens that no such resemblance is to be traced. But
parents may pass on resemblance after several generations, as in the
case of the woman in Elis, who committed adultery with a negro; in
this case it was not the woman's own daughter but the daughter's child
that was a blackamoor.
As a rule the daughters have a tendency to take after the
mother, and the boys after the father; but sometimes it is the other
way, the boys taking after the mother and the girls after the
father. And they may resemble both parents in particular features.
There have been known cases of twins that had no resemblance
to one another, but they are alike as a general rule. There was once
upon a time a woman who had intercourse with her husband a week
after giving birth to a child and she conceived and bore a second
child as like the first as any twin.
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