688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which Avas carried safely to the ship on the liead of Edgar Arclier, but 

 unfortunately broken afterward by a clumsy sailor, we started for the 

 yacht. On our way back across the lagoon we pulled to a high clump 

 of mangroves, in which the frigate-birds build every year. There 

 were some scores of them sitting among the branches, but no nests 

 had yet been built ; nor could we discover in the clefts of the small 

 rocky island near the landing-])lace the nest of the "johnny-crow," 

 which breeds thei*e every year. 



In due course we wended our way back through the sturdy bracken 

 and the silent woods. The morning-glory had already changed its 

 blue coat for one of deep purple, and the leaves looked thirsting for 

 their nightly draught of dew. We quenched our thirst with the warm 

 juice of the pineapples cut fresh from the trees, and a plunge over- 

 board into the clear cool water soon removed every trace of fatigue. 

 — Nineteenth Century. 



CURIOUS FACTS OF INHERITANCE. 



THE strength of the law which determines the transmission of 

 character — physical or otherwise — from parents to children is still 

 far from receiving due attention and recognition. A striking instance 

 of inheritance is often hailed as wonderful and inexplicable ; yet such 

 cases are merely exaggerated examples of a phenomenon of which 

 every family, nay, every individual, affords proof. We all inherit, in 

 a more or less variable degree, the physical constitution and the men- 

 tal aptitudes of our parents ; but this law of inheritance is liable to 

 so much modilication, that frequently its operation becomes entirely 

 lost to view. When two forces act upon a body, the resultant is a 

 mean between the two components. This mean is not merely in all 

 cases different from cither component, but it is a variable mean, the 

 variation depending upon the relative strength of the two component 

 forces. Inheritance affords an exact parallel to this elementary law of 

 mechanics. No child is entirely like either parent ; and the inher- 

 itance of two sets of tendencies which may be allied, opposed, or in- 

 different to each other, may result in characters possessed by neither 

 parent. This result is no breach of the law of inheritance, but is in 

 strict harmony with its most precise conditions ; yet it is not surpris- 

 ing that a law subject to such indefinite variation should gain scanty 

 recognition except from those who have made it a special study, and 

 can, therefore, readily distinguish an explicable exception to a law 

 from an actual l)rcach of it. 



That the law of inheritance should be constant in its operation, 

 however variable in its effects, is not a matter for surprise. That like 

 produces like is the law written upon the universal face of Nature. 

 Sir Henry Holland truly observes that the real subject for surprise is 



