152 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



boy, had six fingers and six toes, like his father ; the second 

 and third, also boys, had five fingers and five toes, like their 

 mother, though the hands and feet of George were slightly 

 deformed. The last, a girl, had five fingers and five toes, 

 but the thumbs were slightly deformed. The variety thus 

 reproduced itself purely in the eldest, while the normal 

 type reproduced itself purely in the third, and almost 

 purely in the second and last : so that it would seem, at 

 first, as if the normal type were more powerful than the 

 variety. But all these children grew up and intermarried 

 with normal wives and husband, and then, note what took 

 place : Salvator had four children, three of whom exhibited 

 the hexadactyle members of their grandfather and father, 

 while the youngest had the pentadactyle limbs of the 

 mother and grandmother ; so that here, notwithstanding 

 a double pentadactyle dilution of the blood, the hexadactyle 

 variety had the best of it. The same prepotency of the 

 variety was still more markedly exemplified in the progeny 

 of two of the other children, Marie and George. Marie 

 (whose thumbs only were deformed) gave birth to a boy 

 with six toes, and three other normally formed children ; 

 but George, who \vas not quite so pure a pentadactyle, 

 begot, first, two girls, each of whom had six fingers and 

 toes ; then a girl with six lingers on each hand and six toes 

 on the right foot, but only five toes on the left ; and lastly, 

 a boy with only five fingers and toes. In these instances, 

 therefore, the variety, as it were, leaped over one genera- 

 tion to reproduce itself in full force in the next. Finally, 

 the purely pentadactyle Andr6 was the father of many 

 children, not one of whom departed from the normal 

 parental type. 



If a variation which approaches the nature of a mon- 

 strosity can strive thus forcibly to reproduce itself, it is not 

 wonderful that less aberrant modifications should tend to 

 be preserved even more strongly ; and the history of the 

 Ancon sheep is, in this respect, particularly instructive. 

 \\ilh the " 'cuteness " chanu-leristic of their nation, the 

 neighbours of the Massachusetts farmer imagined it would 

 be an excellent thing if all his sheep were imbued with 

 the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Nature upon the 

 newly-arrived ram ; and they advised Wright to kill 

 the old patriarch of his fold, and install the Ancon ram in 

 his place. The result justified their sagacious anticipations, 

 and coincided very nearly with what occurred to the 



