34 



INHERITANCE. 



Chap. Xlli. 



When an individual havino- 





succulency and enlargement of certain parts, — characters which would be 

 surely lost by plants growing in a poor soil and struggling with other 

 plants. No cultivated plant has run wild on so enormous a scale as the 

 cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) in La Plata. Every botanist who has seen 

 it growing there, in vast beds/ as high as a horse's back, has been struck 

 with its peculiar appearance ; but whether it differs in any important point 

 from the cultivated Spanish form, which is said not to be prickly like its 

 American descendant, or whether it differs from the wild Mediterranean 

 species, which is said not to be social, I do not know. 



Reversion to Characters derived from a Cross, in the case of 

 Sub-varieties, Maces, and Species. 

 some recognizable peculiarity unites with another of the same 

 sub-variety, not having the peculiarity in question, it often 

 reappears in the descendants after an interval of several gene- 

 rations. Every one must have noticed, or heard from old people 

 of children closely resembling in appearance or mental dis- 

 position, or in so small and complex a character as expression, 

 one of their grandparents, or some more distant collateral 

 relation. Very many anomalies of structure and diseases, 18 

 of which instances have been given in the last chapter, have 

 come into a family from one parent, and have reappeared 

 in the progeny after passing over two or three generations. 

 The following case has been communicated to me on good 

 authority, and may, I believe, be fully trusted : a pointer-bitch 

 produced seven puppies ; four were marked with blue and 

 white, which is so unusual a colour with pointers that she was 

 thought to have played false with one of the greyhounds, and 

 the whole litter was condemned ; but the gamekeeper was per- 

 mitted to save one as a curiosity. Two years afterwards a friend 

 of the owner saw the young dog, and declared that he was the 

 image of his old pointer-bitch Sappho, the only blue and white 

 pointer of pure descent which he had ever seen. This led to 

 close inquiry, and it was proved that he was the great-great- 

 grandson of Sappho ; so that, according to the common expres- 



sion, he had only 1-1 6th of her blood in his veins. Here it can 



hardly be doubted that a character derived from a cross 



with 



an individual of the same variety reappeared after passing over 



three generations. 



15 



Mr. Sedgwick gives many instances in the 'British and Foreign 



Med. 





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Chirurg. Review,' April and July, 1863, pp. 448, 188. 



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