A REMARKABLE ANTICIPATION, ETC. 289 



The preservation of complexion after a race has migrated 

 to a very different climate conforms to the general law. 

 Although the parents may alter greatly " the adventitious 

 colour has no influence on the offspring ". 



Hence in looking for the causes of varieties of mankind 

 we must not "direct our attention to the class of external 

 powers which produce changes on individuals in their own 

 persons, but to those more important causes, which acting on 

 the parents, so influence them that they produce an offspring 

 endowed with certain peculiar characters, which characters, 

 according to the law of nature, become hereditary, and thus 

 modify the race ". 



The sentence I have last quoted concludes the section 

 and very naturally introduces section iv., entitled, "Theory 

 of the Origin of Varieties " (p. 548). 



This section opens with a sentence which might well 

 have been written by Darwin : " Varieties of form or 

 colour, as they spring up in any race, are commonly called 

 accidental, a term only expressive of our ignorance as to 

 the causes which give rise to them ". On the other hand — 

 ''how, by ivhat influence, and m what manner'''' they are 

 produced, " we shall perhaps never be able to ascertain ". 



Examples of new varieties which have sprung up within 

 the experience of man are then given : the " porcupine " 

 and six-fingered man, albinos and variations in colour. He 

 next describes the sudden origin of the ancon or otter 

 breed of sheep, quoting from Col. Humphries in the 

 Philosophical Transactions for 18 13 (part i.). 



Prichard favours the view that when the offspring does 



not exhibit a new variety but follows the main lines of its 



race or breed, it is apt to be influenced by the father rather 



than the mother ; and he quotes a number of statements and 



opinions believed to favour this view ; and finally alludes to 



the celebrated cross between the mare and the male quagga 



in which it was confidently believed that so great an effect was 



produced on the former that her later offspring, although 



begotten by a stallion, were influenced in the direction of 



the quagga (telegony). 



The mother, on the other hand, was believed to be in 



20 



