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1 68 LIFE AND HABIT. 



{Vas soon as it finds itself in circumstances which are cal- 

 culated to refresh its memory owing to their similarity to 

 certain antecedent ones, then we should expect to find: — 



I. That offspring should, as a general rule, resemble 

 its own most immediate progenitors ; that is to say, that 

 it should remember best what it has been doing most 

 recently. The memory being a fusion of its recollec- 

 tions of what it did, both when it was its father and 

 also when it was its mother, the offspring should have 

 a very common tendency to resemble both parents, the 

 one in some respects, and the other in others ; but it 

 might also hardly less commonly show a more marked 

 recollection of the one history than of the other, thus 

 more distinctly resembling one parent than the other. 

 And this is what we observe to be the case. Not only 

 so far as that the offspring is almost invariably either 

 male or female, and generally resembles rather the one 

 parent than the other, but also that in spite of such pre- 

 ponderance of one set of recollections, the sexual char- 

 acters and instincts of the opposite sex appear, whether 

 in male or female, though undeveloped and incapable 

 of development except by abnormal treatment, such as 

 has occasionally caused milk to be developed in the 

 mammary glands of males ; or by mutilation, or failure 

 of sexual instinct through age, upon which, male charac- 

 teristics frequently appear in the females of any species. 



Brothers and sisters, each giving their own version 

 of the same story, though in different words, should 

 resemble each other more closely than more distant 

 relations. This too we see. 



But it should frequently happen that offspring should 



