40 THE ORGANIC GROWTH OF THE LIVING WORLD sec. 



certainly also the cause of the fact that we are able to recog- 

 nise family likeness in so great a degree among the earliest 

 male ancestors of a family, as they appear in many a gallery 

 of family portraits ; and further, it also explains why the male 

 line of descent is considered of such great importance, while 

 the female is scarcely regarded. If this prepotency of the 

 male did not exist, if the female element in all unions had 

 exactly the same value as the male, then, after comparatively 

 few generations, by the combination of equally potent male 

 and female types, all similarity to ancestors, excluding cases 

 of one-sided reversion, would be completely effaced. 



A very remarkable example of male prepotency in this 

 connection is afforded by the large under lip of the Habs- 

 burgers. Portraits of Rudolf I. of Habsburg already show it. 

 It was inherited by his descendants up till the last of them, 

 the Emperor Charles VI. (1740), that is, for 500 years. 

 AVith Charles VI. the male line of the Habsburgers became 

 extinct. Its place was supplied by the Thuringian line, 

 derived from the marriage of Francis of Thuringia with the 

 Habsburger Maria Theresia. In the male descendants of this 

 couple the great under lip appeared again, and has been 

 transmitted up to the present day, although the wives of the 

 Habsburgers, coming from various families, could not possibly 

 by chance have generally possessed it, and did not possess it.^ 



At all events, the fact of male prepotency in itself shows 

 that a complete mingling of characters is no more the usual 

 consequence of sexual union than the production of herma- 

 phrodites that of the coalescence of sperm and ovum in 

 animals of separate sexes. Atavism is no greater miracle 

 than these facts which must be explained with it. 



Another factor contributing to the separation of forms into 

 species without selection, to be added to those already mentioned 



^ Cf. Pinacotheca 2irincipicm Austriae, by Marquard Hergott and R. Heer 

 {Benedictines in St. Blasien), Freiburg, 1770. 



