INFLUENCE OF MALE AND FEMALE PARENT 125 



Certain individuals, male and female, exercise a pre- 

 ponderating influence in generation. They have the 

 faculty of overcoming the influence of the other 

 parent, and stamping their own peculiarities upon the 

 offspring in all circumstances. This Darwin calls 

 prepotency, remarking that but for the existence of 

 the principle it would be difiicult to explain the 

 transmission of characteristic traits in certain families, 

 notwithstanding the marriage of the males with women 

 of the most diverse origin. The emperors of Austria 

 furnish an example in point, and so, according to 

 Niebuhr, did certain Eoman families. Sometimes the 

 father's prepotency is manifested in all his children ; 

 at other times in the sons alone or in the daughters 

 alone. And what we call prepotency in one parent 

 may be only the excessive weakness of the other, so 

 far as the power of transmitting qualities is concerned. 

 Michelet in his History of France observes that the 

 French kings during the most dissolute period of the 

 monarchy seemed to be incapable of engendering 

 sons in their own likeness. " The heir to the throne," 

 says that writer, " invariably took after his mother. 

 Like her, he was essentially a foreigner. The succes- 

 sion almost always had the effect of an invasion. 

 Catherine and Marie de Medicis gave us pure Italians ; 



