230 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xii. 



as intelligible as the general similarity, if we reflect how complex 

 the co-operating &quot; bundles of forces &quot; are, and how improbable it 

 is that, in any case, their true resultant shall coincide with any 

 mean between the more obvious characters of the two parents. 

 Whatever be its cause, however, the co-existence of this tendency 

 to minor variation with the tendency to general similarity, is 

 of vast importance in its bearing on the question of the origin 

 of species. 



As a general rule, the extent to which an offspring differs 

 from its parent is slight enough ; but, occasionally, the amount 

 of difference is much more strongly marked, and then the 

 divergent offspring receives the name of a Variety. Multitudes, 

 of what there is every reason to believe are such varieties, are 

 known, but the origin of very few has been accurately recorded, 

 and of these we will select two as more especially illustrative of 

 the main features of variation. The first of them is that of the 

 &quot; Ancon,&quot; or &quot; Otter &quot; sheep, of which a careful account is given 

 by Colonel David Humphreys, F.R.S., in a letter to Sir Joseph 

 Banks, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1813. 

 It appears that one Seth Wright, the proprietor of a farm on 

 the banks of the Charles River, in Massachusetts, possessed a 

 flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary kind. In the 

 year 1791, one of the ewes presented her owner with a male 

 lamb, differing, for no assignable reason, from its parents by a 

 proportionally long body and short bandy legs, whence it was 

 unable to emulate its relatives in those sportive leaps over the 

 neighbours fences, in which they were in the habit of indulging, 

 much to the good farmer s vexation. 



The second case is that detailed by a no less unexceptionable 

 authority than Reaumur, in his &quot; Art de faire eclore les Poulets.&quot; 

 A Maltese couple, named Kelleia, whose hands and feet were 

 constructed upon the ordinary human model, had bora to them 

 a son, Gratio, who possessed six perfectly movable fingers on 

 each hand, and six toes, not quite so well formed, on each foot. 

 No cause could be assigned for the appearance of this unusual 

 variety of the human species. 



