BREEDING FOR POINTS. 133 



offspring, while it may fail in other children, whose faces", 

 nevertheless, show other resemblances, complicated perhaps 

 with stronger resemblances to the mother, or to other 

 members of the families of both parents. So much is 

 apparent to all. 



But further; in many cases, where no obvious resem- 

 blance can be traced to the direct parents, a very striking 

 one often appears to the grandparents, or even to other 

 ancestors still further back. Thus we see that features have 

 a greater or less tendency to reappear in posterity, even 

 beyond the next immediate step in the family pedigree ; 

 and some extraordinary features, such as the possession of 

 six digits instead of five, are often thus transmitted through 

 successive crosses with great pertinacity. Many facts of this 

 kind have made it certain that every feature in every 

 animal has some tendency to repeat itself, and would do so, 

 more or less, were it not counteracted by other tendencies. 

 If one parent has black hair and the other brown, the 

 black-haired parent has a tendency to repeat that feature in 

 his children ; but this is modified or counteracted by that of 

 the other to transmit brown ; and both are modified by the 

 colour of the hair in ancestors further back. And the result 

 in any immediate case is impossible of prediction, because 

 there are so many discordant tendencies ; marriages having 

 taken place quite irrespective of the colour of the hair. 



The breeding which is to succeed in producing the 

 <{ points " of exhibition poultry consists in throwing all 

 these tendencies into one desired direction, so that the 

 influence of remote ancestors, of great-grandparents and 

 grandparents, as well as of the parents, combine towards 

 the desired point. Let us take a case. It would be very 

 easy to find a fowl which, from some cross with the 

 Dorking generations back, and never repeated, exhibited 

 the fifth toe. Though really due to the far-back cross, 



