Permanence and Evolution. 97 



nounced in youth. I cannot see anything 

 particularly surprising in this, or any great argu- 

 ment against the permanence of characters. It 

 may seem easier to the imagination to suppose 

 that a strain, say of wild dogs, which should be 

 born black, and turn grey with the first moult, 

 should now and then, without assignable cause, 

 produce a black puppy which should remain 

 black all its life, than that the same sport should 

 take place in a strain which should be grey from 

 the beginning ; but it has yet to be shown that 

 this is more likely than the other to happen in 

 nature. It is said, indeed, by Darwin that the 

 observation of domestic varieties (pigeons), etc., 

 shows 1 that variations are apt not to be trans- 

 mitted to the young as long as they remain 

 such ; but we have seen that the forms from the 

 observation of which this is said are, in all pro- 

 bability, originally distinct. 



It ' must be remembered in comparing the 

 youthful and embryonic stages of certain living 



H 



