TO VARIATIONS, DUE TO REVERSION. 



facts, with a theory based upon an assumption which 

 is not only wholly gratuitous, but in wanton deroga- 

 tion of a competent, known, and well-established, scien- 

 tific factor. The phenomenon of the recovery of long- 

 lost characters, by means of crossing, is shown, in a 

 future chapter of this work, to be perfectly explicable. 



" In many cases," says he (p. 105, Vol. ii, Animals 

 and Plants, &c), " the failure of the parents to trans- 

 mit their likeness, is due to the breed having been at 

 some former period crossed ; and the child takes after 

 his grandparent, or more remote ancestor, of foreign 

 blood. In other cases, in which the breed has not 

 been crossed, but some ancient character has been lost 

 through variation, it occasionally reappears through 

 Reversion, so that the parents apparently fail to trans- 

 mit their own likeness. In all cases, however, we may 

 safely conclude that the child inherits all its characters 

 from its parents, in whom certain characters are latent. 

 * * * When, after a long succession of bud gen- 

 erations, a flower or fruit becomes separated into dis- 

 tinct segments, having the colors or other attributes of 

 both parent forms, we cannot doubt that these charac- 

 ters were latent in the earlier buds, though they could 

 not then be detected, or could be detected only in an 

 intimately commingled state. So it is with animals of 

 crossed parentage, which, with advancing years, occa- 

 sionally exhibit characters, derived from one of their 

 two parents, of which not a trace could at first be per- 

 ceived." 



Again he says, on the same page with the above 

 remarks : 



" It is assuredly an astonishing fact, that the male 

 and female sexual elements, that buds, and even full- 

 grown animals, should retain characters, during several 



