A child in its mental characteristics is said to take after one or the other of its parents, certain habits and mental traits are the same, often even the handwriting of a child resembles that of a parent.
In certain cases the inheritance is transmitted by the female alone.
This is the case in the haemophilia, the unfortunate subjects of which are known as bleeders.

There is in this a marked tendency to haemorrhage which depends upon an alteration in the character of the blood which prevents clotting.

This, the natural means of stopping bleeding from small wounds, being in abeyance, fatal haemorrhage may result from pulling a tooth or from an insignificant wound.

There is a seeming injustice in the inheritance, for the females do not suffer from the disease although they transmit it, while the males who have the disease cannot even create additional sympathy by transmitting it.
The most obvious inheritance is seen in the case of malformations.
These represent wide departures from the type of the species as represented in the form.

There is no hard and fast line separating the slight departures from the normal type known as variations and mutations, from the malformations.