INADEQUACY OP NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. G25 



assigned. There naturally arises the question — How does it 

 happen that parallel results are not observed in other cases ? If 

 in any progeny certain traits not belonging to the sire, but be- 

 longing to a sire of preceding progeny, are reproduced, how is 

 it that such anomalously inherited traits are not observed in 

 domestic animals, and indeed in mankind ? How is it that the 

 children of a widow by a second husband do not bear traceable 

 resemblances to the first husband ? To these questions nothing 

 like satisfactory replies seem forthcoming ; and, in the absence of 

 replies, scepticism, if not disbelief, may be held reasonable. 



There is an explanation, however. Forty years ago I made 

 acquaintance with a fact which impressed me by its significant 

 implications, and has, for this reason I suppose, remained in my 

 memory. It is set forth in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society, Vol. XIV (1853), pp. 214 et seq., and concerns certain 

 results of crossing French and English breeds of sheep. The 

 writer of the translated paper, M. Malingie-Nouel, Director of the 

 Agricultural School of La Charmoise, states that when the French 

 breeds of sheep (in which were included " the mongrel Merinos ") 

 were crossed with an English breed, "the lambs present the fol- 

 lowinof results. Most of them resemble the riiother more than 

 the father; some show no trace of the father." Joining the 

 admission respecting the mongrels with the facts subsequently 

 stated, it is tolerably clear that the cases in which the lambs bore 

 no traces of the father were cases in which the mother was of pure 

 breed. Speaking of the results of these crossings in the second 

 generation, "having 1o per cent, of English blood," M. Nouel 

 says : — " The lambs thrive, wear a beautiful appearance, and com- 

 plete the joy of the breeder. . . . No sooner are the lambs 

 weaned than their strength, their vigour, and their beauty begin 

 to decay. ... At last the constitution gives way . 

 he remains stunted for life : " the constitution being thus proved 

 unstable or unadapted to the requirements. How, then, did 

 M. Nouel succeed in obtaining a desirable combination of a fine 

 English breed with the relatively poor French breeds ? 



He took an animal from "flocks originally sprung from a mixture of the 

 two distinct races that are established in ihose two provinces [Berry and 

 La SoloJine]," and these ho '' united with animals of another mixed breed 

 . . . wliich blended the Tou:angelle and native Merino blood of" La Beaucc 

 and Tourainc, and obtained a mixture of all four races " without decided 

 character, without fixity . . . but possessing the advantage of being used to 

 our climate and management." 



Putting one of these "mixed blood ewes to a pure New-Kent ram . . . 

 one obtains a lamb containing fifty-hundredths of the purest and most ancient 

 English blood, with twelve and a half hundredths of four different French 

 races, which are individually lost in the preponderance of English blood, and 

 disappear almost entirely, leaving the improving type in the ascendant. . . . 



