Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1896 — CLAW-FINGERED COLONY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CLAW-FINGERED COLONY.

It Exists In Cattaraoeoa Valley, N. —T. Peculiar Growth. In Cattaraugus valley, N. Y., there la a whole colony of people who have claws on both fingers and toes. All are descendants of a wan named Robbins. The peculiarity was inherited, as they became more pronounced in each succeeding generation. A peculiar thing about this strange heritage is that it

is impossible to tell where or iu what form it will appear. Sometimes it is inherited from the father, sometimes from the mother; sometimes it appeal's in all the children of a family, and at others in only one or two in a large number. Sometimes a father and mother who have well formed hands and feet will bring up a large family of children, all of them badly, and, perhaps, variously defowued, and again parents with unsightly digits will have children in whom no deformity appears. Sometimes the disfigurement appears only in a person’s hands, but not iu his feet, or vice versa; sometimes it appears in one hand or foot only, and not in the other, and so on, until apparently all the possible combinations are exhausted. Naturally, under these circumstances, the descendants of the Robbins family have not been welcomed as sons and daughters-in-law. They have been forced, therefore, to intermarry to a great extent, and in consequence this queer heritage has been handed down more persistently than it otherwise would have been.

A CLAW-FINGERED HAND.