40 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



operation of that law all who have had much 

 experience in breeding animals of the same 

 families for a number of generations especially 

 become so accustomed to the reversion to an 

 old and long-unseen character as to regard such 

 a reversion as a matter of course. The gen- 

 eral recognition of atavism was probably first 

 reached by agricultural students, though spe- 

 cial cases were early recorded in human history. 

 Indeed, there are few more striking instances 

 of this law than that case recorded by Plutarch 

 of the Greek woman who gave birth to a negro 

 child, was tried for adultery, and was acquitted 

 upon the proof that she was descended in the 

 fourth generation from an Ethiopian. There 

 is also an interesting passage in Thackeray's 

 "Four Georges" (Vol. I, p. 4), in which he 

 marks the reversion of George III to the char- 

 acter of an ancestor of the eighth generation 

 William of Luneburg from whom he not 

 merely inherited his blindness and insanity 

 but also a number of the peculiar traits of 

 mind and some of the special abberations of 

 the old Duke. Writing of Duke William he 

 says: "He was a very religious lord and was 

 called 'William the Pious' by his small circle 

 of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate de- 

 prived him both of sight and reason. Some- 

 times in his latter days the good Duke had 

 glimpses of mental light, when he would bid 



