66 VARIATIONS, DUE TO REVERSION. 



parent breeds, so strengthens the correlation of the 

 forces of the organism, as to enable it, the more, to 

 repair its lost integrity. 

 Continuing, he says : 



" Many monstrosities come under this same head, as 

 when rudimentary organs are re-developed, or when an 

 organ which we must believe was possessed by an 

 early progenitor, but of which not even a rudiment 

 was left, suddenly reappears, as with the fifth stamen 

 in some Scrophulariacae. We have already seen that 

 reversion acts in bud-reproduction ; and we know that 

 it occasionally acts during the growth of the same 

 individual animal, especially, but not exclusively, when 

 of crossed parentage — as in the rare cases described of 

 individual fowls, pigeons, cattle and rabbits." 



" We are led to believe, as formerly explained, that 

 every character which occasionally reappears, is present 

 in a latent form in each generation. * * * In every 

 (!) living creature, we may feel assured that a host of 

 lost characters lie ready to be evolved under proper 

 conditions. How can we make intelligible, and con- 

 nect with other facts, this wonderful and common 

 capacity of Reversion — this power of calling back to 

 life long-lost characters !" 



" Long-lost characters," break out in mystic refrain, 

 upon almost every page of his works. Why he does 

 not see, that these " long-lost characters " are attuned 

 most harmoniously to the improvements which arise, 

 is a psychological phenomenon which it behooves us 

 not here to explain. Yet, we cannot help suspecting, 

 and cannot refrain from delicately intimating, that 

 either a dim, or a well-defined consciousness, on his 

 part, that the discovery of the harmony of these "long- 



