ATAVISM. 67 



bitch produced seven puppies. Four were marked 

 with blue and white, which is so unusual a color with 

 pointers that she was thought to have played false 

 with one of the greyhounds, and the whole litter was 

 condemned ; but the game-keeper was permitted to 

 save one as a curiosity. 



" Two years afterward a friend of the owner saw 

 the young dog, and declared that he was the image of 

 his old pointer-bitch Sappho, the only blue-and-white 

 pointer of pure descent which he had ever seen. This 

 led to close inquiry, and it was proved that he was the 

 great-great-grandson of Sappho ; so that, according to 

 the common expression, he had only one-sixteenth of 

 her blood in his veins." ' 



Mr. Tollett, of Betley Hall, crossed his fowls with 

 Malays, and, though he attempted to get rid of this 

 strain, he gave it up in despair, the Malay characters 

 reappearing forty years after the cross was made. 8 



Mr. Hewett states that the Rumpless fowls in 

 some instances produce young with tail-feathers, but 

 that, when three such birds were selected to breed 

 from, there was but one chick with a tail out of over 

 twenty bred from the trio. 3 



Goodale relates an interesting case that occurred 

 in the Kennebec Yalley. Many years ago there were 

 a few polled cattle in that locality, but they finally 

 became extinct. For thirty-five years after the last 

 of these polled cattle was killed the cattle on the farm 

 of Mr. Wingate all had horns, but, at the end of that 



1 " Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii., p. 46. 

 8 On the authority of Mr. Darwin, loc. cit., p. 49. 

 3 Tegetmeier's "Poultry-Book," p. 231. 



