8 INHERITANCE. OiiAP. XIII. 



sion,' one of their grandparents, or some more distant collateral 

 relation. Very many anomalies of structure and diseases,^® 

 of wliich instances have been given in the last chapter, have 

 come into a family from one parent, and have reappeared 

 in the progeny after passing over two or three generations. 

 The following case has been communicated to me on good 

 authority, and may, I believe, be fully trusted : a pointer-bitch 

 produced seven puppies ; four were marked with blue and 

 white, which is so unusual a colour with pointers that she was 

 thought to have played false with one of the greyhounds, and 

 the whole litter was condemned ; but the gamekeeper was per- 

 mitted to save one as a curiosity. Two years afterwards a 

 friend of the owner saw the young dog, and declared that he 

 was the image of his old pointer-bitch Sappho, the only blue 

 and white pointer of pure descent which he had ever seen. 

 This led to close inquiry, and it was proved that he was the 

 great-great-grandson of Sappho ; so that, according to the 

 common expression, he had only 1-1 6th of her blood in his 

 veins. I may give one other instance, on the authority of 

 Mr. E. Walker, a large cattle-breeder in Kincardineshire. 

 He bought a black bull, the son of a black cow with white 

 legs, white belly and part of the tail white; and in 1870 

 a calf the gr.-gr.-gr.-gr.-grandchild of this cow was born 

 coloured in the same veiy peculiar manner ; all the inter- 

 mediate offspring having been black. In these cases there 

 can hardly be a doubt that a character derived from a cross 

 with an individual of the same variety reappeared after 

 passing over three generations in the one case, and five in the 

 other. 



When two distinct races are crossed, it is notorious that the 

 tendency in the offspring to revert to one or both parent- 

 forms is strong, and endures for many generations. I have 

 myself seen the clearest evidence of this in crossed pigeons 

 and with various j^lants. Mr. Sidney ^' states that, in a litter 

 of Essex pigs, two young ones appeared which were the image 

 of the Berkshire boar that had been used twenty-eight years 



" Mr. Sedgwick gives many in- July, 1863, pp. 448, 188. 

 stances in The ' British and Foreign *' In his edit, of ' Youatt on the 



Med-Chirurg. Review,' April and Pig,' 1860, p. 27. 



