REVERSION, NOT A LAW, SUI GENERIS. Ill 



be termed, hundredth, thousandth, or ten thousandth 

 intention; according to the interval of time, during 

 which, the characters, eventually regained, have re- 

 mained reduced or suppressed. 



The mistake, made by those who have advocated 

 the evolution of the species, has been, in placing 

 the fixed type, — that is, the organism, which is in 

 its full, normal integrity, — in those individuals of the 

 given species, which have the average structure of the 

 species, as it exists under nature. The type there, now, 

 however, is a degenerated type, with its structural in- 

 tegrity impaired, by the loss of some characters, and 

 by the reduction of others ; and, the type of the given 

 species is not fixed under the existing state of nature. 

 It is fixed (i. e., normally fixed), at a certain margin of 

 development, above such structure as it subsists in the 

 state of nature. The improvement, in each species, 

 under domestication, is a margin, merely, correspond- 

 ing with the margin of previous degeneration. The 

 characters which arise, do but resume their lost, struc- 

 tural integrity, as characters do, when reproduced in a 

 truncated salamander. The fact, that function takes 

 precedence of structure, should suffice to indicate that 

 the power displayed, is Reversion. 



Air of these powers, of repair, are Reversions to the 

 primordial integrity of the given organism's species. 

 The Reversion, which is especially so called, is solely 

 a different manifestation of the same power which, in 

 nutrition, replaces the disintegrated tissue ; of the same 

 power, which repairs a wound, or a bruise; of the same 

 power, which shows itself in the reproduction of a lost 



