VARIATIONS. 25 



parent, in feature, form, and limb, or perhaps in mind, or 

 even in both ; but such cases are extremely rare, and in 

 no case must we ever hope to find a perfect likeness. 

 Nature does not slavishly follow any one type or pattern, 

 but revels in infinite variety within certain limits. 



The slight variations constantly met with in the 

 family are due, for the most part, to the various blend- 

 ings of the parental characters, which a moment's con- 

 sideration will show may be endless. Eemnants of 

 the countless characters of the ancestors are present 

 in each parent, some strong, some weak, some standing 

 out prominently, others almost effaced. Nor are they 

 even thus a constant quantity, for while the life of 

 the individual develops one, it may allow another to 

 fade almost to oblivion. Thus the children begotten 

 at different periods of life, even if they were mere 

 examples of the mean of the parents, must vary 

 considerably. As it is, one child will inherit some 

 peculiar character from one parent, in whom that par- 

 ticular character is just then prominent and active; 

 another child will inherit largely some other character 

 from the same or the other parent, while a third child 

 may, by some happy blending of perhaps mediocre 

 parental characters, become the fortunate inheritor of 

 some physical or mental character of a high order ; or, 

 conversely, by some unlucky mischance, parental char- 

 acters, good in themselves, may combine to form a 

 compound markedly bad. 



^"The inheritance of the child is a piece of patchwork, 

 a thing of shreds and patches. It is a mosaic made 



