PREPOTENCY IN CHARACTERS. 65 



fixed so that it was transmitted again and again, 

 gaining in fixity with each successive transmission. 



The strongest proof of all, however, of the fixity or 

 prepotency gained by long descent, is to be found in 

 reversion. When a character is lost in consequence 

 of reversion, it is nearly always a more or less recently 

 acquired one, while that which appears in its place 

 is invariably an old family one. The normal type, 

 which reversion does its best to reproduce, is made 

 up of characters which have run in the family for 

 ages. Acquired characters have accumulated in the 

 course of a few generations, and the old family type 

 seems to be overborne and lost in the new. But the 

 lines of the old family pattern are not erased. They 

 lie deep down in the organism intact, only blurred 

 or hidden by the recent characters overlying them, 

 and ready to appear, clear and distinct, when these 

 latter from any cause are brushed aside. 



But it is unnecessary to labour the point. If we 

 accept evolution, I think we must accept -the theory 

 of prepotency increasing with age as a part of that 

 doctrine. Were it not possible for a character to be 

 thus fixed by repeated transmission, so as to defy the 

 natural tendency to reversion to the original, evolution 

 would be an impossibility, and all that has been built 

 upon it must tumble to the ground. 



Thus we see that evolution and heredity go hand in 

 hand, they work together, they are inseparable. Evo- 

 lution modifies the individual and suits him to his 

 surroundings, his mode of life, and heredity perpetuates 



