Chap. XIH. 



BE VERSION. 



acquired the dark colour, the thick bristles, and great tusks of the 

 wild boar; and the young have reacquired longitudinal stripes. 

 But even in the case of the pig, Eoulin describes the half-wild 

 animals in diflferent parts of South America as differing in several 

 respects. In Louisiana the pig^^ has run wild, and is said to differ 

 a little in form, and much in colour, from the domestic animal, yet 

 does not closely resemble the wild boar of Europe. "With pigeons 

 and fowls,^^ it is not known what variety was first turned out, nor 

 Avhat character the feral birds have assumed. The guinea-fowl in 

 the West Indies, when feral, seems to vary more than in the 

 domesticated state. 



With respect to plants run wild. Dr. Hooker" has strongly 

 insisted on what slight evidence the common belief in their 

 reversion to a primitive state rests. Godron^^ describes wild 

 turnips, carrots, and celery; but these plants in their cultivated 

 state hardly differ from their wild prototypes, except in the succu- 

 lency and enlargement of certain parts, — characters which would 

 certainly be lost by plants growing in poor soil and struggling with 

 other plants. No cultivated plant has run wild on so enormous 

 a scale as the cardoon {Cynara cardunculus) in La Plata. Every 

 botanist who has seen it growing there, in vast beds, as high as 

 a horse's back, has been struck with its peculiar appearance ; but 

 whether it differs in any important point from the cultivated 

 Spanish form, which is said not to be prickly like its American 

 descendant, or whether it differs from the wild Mediterranean 

 species, which is said not to be social (though this may be due 

 merely to the nature of the conditions), I do not know. 



Heversion to Characters derived from a Cross, in the case of 

 Sub -varieties. Races, and Species. — When an individual having 

 some recognisable peculiarity unites with another of the same 

 sub-variety, not having the peculiarity in question, it often 

 reappears in the descendants after an interval of several gene- 

 rations. Every one must have noticed, or heard from old 

 people of children closely resembling in appearance or mental 

 disposition, or in so small and complex a character as expres- 



^- Bureau de la Malle, in ' Comptes 

 Rendus,' torn, xli., 18"'5, p. 807. 

 From the statements above given, the 

 author concludes that the wild pigs 

 of Louisiana are not descended from 

 the European Sus scrofa. 



** Capt. W. Allen, in his * Expe- 

 dition, to the Niger,' states that fowls 

 have run wild on the island of Anno- 

 bon, and have become modified in 

 form and voice. The account is so 

 meacrre and vague that it did not 



appear to me worth copying; but I now 

 find that Dureau de la Mallet^' Comp- 

 tes Rendus,' tom. xli., 1855, p. 690) 

 advances this as a good instance of 

 reversion to the primitive stock, and as 

 confirmatory of a still more v;igue 

 statement in classical times by Yarro. 



1* 'Flora of Australia,' 1859, In- 

 troduct., p. ix. 



^^ ' De I'Espece,' tom. ii. pp. 54, 

 58, 60. 



