xii.] THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 267 



third, and almost purely in the second and last : so 

 that it would seem, at first, as if the normal type 

 were more powerful than the variety. But all these 

 children grew up and intermarried with normal wives 

 and husband, and then, note what took place : Sal- 

 vat or had four children, three of whom exhibited the 

 hexadactyle members of their grandfather and father, 

 while the youngest had the pentaclactyle limbs of the 

 mother and grandmother ; so that here, notwithstanding 

 a double pentadactyle dilution of the blood, the hexa- 

 dactyle variety had the best of it. The same pre-potency 

 of the variety was still more markedly exemplified in 

 the progeny of two of the other children, Marie and 

 George. Marie (whose thumbs only were deformed) 

 gave birth to a boy with six toes, and three other 

 normally formed children ; but George, who was not 

 quite so pure a pentadactyle, begot, first, two girls, each 

 of whom had six fingers and toes ; then a girl with six 

 fingers on each hand and six toes on the right foot, but 

 only fiYQ toes on the left ; and lastly, a boy with only 

 five fingers and toes. In these instances, therefore, the 

 variety, as it were, leaped over one generation to re- 

 produce itself in full force in the next. Finally, the 

 purely pentadactyle Andre was the father of many 

 children, not one of whom departed from the normal 

 parental type. 



If a variation which approaches the nature of a mon- 

 strosity can strive thus forcibly to reproduce itself, it is 

 not wonderful that less aberrant modifications should 

 tend to be preserved even more strongly ; and the history 

 of the Ancon sheep is, in this respect, particularly in- 

 structive. With the "'cuteness " characteristic of their 

 nation, the neighbours of the Massachusets farmer 

 imagined it would be an excellent thing if all his sheep 

 were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced 



