

82 INHERITANCE. Chap. XIV. 



the chances are obviously in favour of any character which has 

 long been transmitted true or unaltered, still being transmitted 

 true as long as the conditions of life remain the same. We 

 know that many species, after having retained the same character 

 for countless ages, whilst living under their natural conditions, 

 when domesticated have varied in the most diversified manner, 

 that is, have failed to transmit their original form : so that no 

 character appears to be absolutely fixed. We can sometimes 

 account for the failure of inheritance by the conditions of life 

 being opposed to the development of certain characters ; and 

 still oftener, as with plants cultivated by grafts and buds, by 

 the conditions causing new and slight modifications incessantly 



appear. In 



inheritance wholly 



fails, but that new characters are continually superadded. In 

 some few cases, in which both parents are similarly charac- 

 terised, inheritance seems to gain so much force by the com- 

 bined action of the two parents, that it counteracts its own power, 

 and a new modification is the result. 



In many cases the failure of the parents to transmit 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 transmit 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, like the secondary sexual 

 characters of one sex in the other. When, after a long suc- 

 cession of bud-generations, a flower or fruit becomes separated 

 into distinct segments, having the colours or other attributes 

 of both parent-forms, w r e cannot doubt that these characters 

 were latent in the earlier buds, though they could not then 

 be detected, or could be detected only in an intimately com- 

 mingled state. So it is with animals of crossed parentage, which 

 with advancing years occasionally exhibit characters derived 

 from one of their two parents, of which not a trace could at 

 first be perceived. Certain monstrosities, which resemble what 

 naturalists call the tvpical form of the group in question, 





