The Evidence from Hybrids. 129 



and in some other slight peculiarities; its hind legs are 

 longer, and its habits peculiar. According to Mr. Orton 

 (Physiology of Breeding, 1855, p. 9; quoted by Darwin, 

 Variation, ii. 86), Dr. Wilson crossed a male Manx cafe 

 with common cats, and, out of twenty-three kittens, 

 seventeen were destitute of tails; but when the female 

 Manx was crossed by common male cats all the kittens 

 had tails, though they were generally short and im- 

 perfect. Darwin gives the following in his Variation 

 under Domestication (ii. 85): " Godina has given a 

 curious case of a ram of a goat-like breed of sheep from 

 the Cape of Good Hope, which produced offspring 

 hardly to be distinguished from himself when crossed with 

 ewes of twelve other breeds. But two of these half- 

 bred ewes, when put to a merino ram, produced lambs 

 closely resembling the merino breed." 



I quote the folio wing from Darwin also (p. 87): "The 

 silk fowl breeds true, and there is reason to believe that 

 it is a very ancient race; but when I reared a large num- 

 ber of mongrels from a silk hen by a Spanish cock, not 

 OHO exhibited even a trace of the so-called silkiness. Mr. 

 Hewitt also asserts that in no instance are the silky 

 feathers transmitted by this breed when crossed with 

 any other variety. But three birds out of many raised 

 by Mr. Orton from a cross between a silk cock and a 

 bantam hen had silky feathers. 



There are some instances of reciprocal crosses which 

 seem at first sight to give directly opposite results, and 

 therefore to contradict our theory. 



Thus Darwin says that a hybrid which had for its 

 mother a bay mare and for its father a hybrid between 

 a male ass and a female zebra, had, when young, zebra- 

 like stripes upon its shoulders, flanks and legs. Here 

 the only recent striped ancestor is the paternal grand- 



