336 The Morality of Nature 



tion of a new acquirement. There may be a freaklike loss 

 of color, or a freedom in many novelties of color; or an 

 abnormal length or shortness of tail, or of claw, because 

 regularity in such things is no longer governed by disabili- 

 ties. It is disputed how these variations arise ; but they are 

 evident, and their permissiveness is perceived. Perhaps 

 they are revived results of experiences long past ; reversions 

 they are called. It may well be that a character, long ago 

 acquired by an ancestor as a consequence of environment, 

 and duly recorded in the heredity, may wait for several 

 generations before its effect completes the chain of in- 

 fluence back to the prime cell, and outward again to the 

 germ cell, and so to somatic result. But in fact such novel- 

 ties do appear, and sometimes a novelty proves useful. A 

 shortened tail avoids dirt and disease, or a long claw in- 

 creases defensive power, or a brilliant color attracts con- 

 sorts or pleases man, and the new character is fostered, 

 and those individuals in which it appears, share an ad- 

 vantage. They collect and increase in number, and mate 

 together, and when both parents have such distinction many 

 offspring inherit it, and after several generations the devia- 

 tions from it become the exception and disappear, and the 

 new feature becomes constant and fixed. Consider the 

 pure black plumage of certain domestic fowls. It is fairly 

 reliable — it breeds nearly true to type — yet it is a new type, 

 obtained by the elimination from the germ of the chro- 

 matin qualities which bred the normal wild coloring, and 

 the substitution of another chromatin quality. Back of a 

 certain time all the ancestors of this fowl lacked this aspect 

 of color. Something has been added to or taken from the 



