142 REVERSION AND ALLIED PHENOMENA 



Conclusion. — In his Locksley Hall Sixty Years After Tennyson 

 spoke of — 



Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good, 



And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud ; 



but this is making a bogey of reversion. Most of the phenomena 

 commonly labelled as " reversions " are wrongly labelled, unless 

 we are content to use the term in a very loose descriptive sense. 

 True reversion does not seem to be of frequent occurrence. 

 Moreover, when it does occur, it may mean, not a deterioration, 

 but a return to a position of greater organic stabihty. What 

 acts as a drag or brake — often advantageously — on progressive 

 variation is not so much reversion as filial regression. 



