DESCENT OF MAN FROM SOME LOWER FORM. 161 



one parent alone displays some newly-acquired and gener- 

 ally inheritable character, and the offspring do not in- 

 herit it, the cause may lie in the other parent having the 

 power of prepotent transmission. But when both parents 

 are similarly characterized, and the child does not, what- 

 ever the cause may be, inherit the character in question, 

 but resembles its grandparents, we have one of the sim- 

 plest cases of reversion. "We continually see another 

 and even more simple case of atavism, though not gen- 

 erally included under this head, namely, when the son 

 more closely resembles his maternal than his paternal 

 grandsire in some male attribute, as in any peculiarity in 

 the beard of man, the horns of the bull, the hackles or 

 comb of the cock, or, as in certain diseases necessarily 

 confined to the male sex ; for, as the mother can not pos- 

 sess or exhibit such male attributes, the child must in- 

 herit them, through her blood, from his maternal grand- 

 sire. 



The cases of reversion may be divided into two main 

 classes, which, however, in some instances, blend into one 

 another ; namely, first, those occurring in a variety or race 

 which has not been crossed, but has lost by variation some 

 character that it formerly possessed, and which afterward 

 reappears. The second class includes all cases in which 

 an individual with some distinguishable character, a race, 

 or species, has at some former period been crossed, and 

 a character derived from this cross, after having disap- 

 peared during one or several generations, suddenly reap- 

 pears. 



| p From these facts we may perhaps infer that 



the degraded state of so many half-castes is in 

 .rt due to reversion to a primitive and savage condition, 

 duced bv the act of crossing, even if mainly due to the 



