THE ORIGIN OF THE VARIETIES OF PIGEONS. 83 



Salvator, had sis fingers and sis toes, like his father ; the second was George, 

 who had five fingers and toes, hut one of them was deformed, showing a tendency 

 to variation ; the third was Andre, he had five fingers and five toes, quite perfect ; 

 the fourth was a girl, Marie ; she had five fingers and five toes, hut her thumbs 

 were deformed, showing a tendency towards the sixth. 



" These children grew up, and when they came to adult years, they all married, 

 and of course it happened that they all married five-fingered and five-toed persons. 

 Now let us see what were the results. Salvator had four children ; they were two 

 boys, a girl, and another boy : the first two boys and the girl were six-fingered 

 and six-toed like their grandfather ; the fourth boy had only five fingers and five 

 toes. George had only four children : there were two girls with six fingers and 

 sis toes ; there was one girl with six fingers and five toes on the right side, and 

 five fingers and five toes on the left side, so that she was half and half. The last, 

 a boy, had five fingers and five toes. The third, Andre, you will recollect, was 

 perfectly well-formed, and he had many children whose hands and feet were all 

 regularly developed. Marie, the last, who, of course, married a man who had 

 only five fingers, had four children : the first, a boy, was born with sis toes, but 

 the other three were normal. 



"Now observe what very estraordinary phenomena are presented here. You have 

 an accidental variation arising from what you may call a monstrosity ; you have 

 that monstrosity tendency or variation diluted in the first instance by an admix- 

 ture with a female of normal construction, and you would naturally expect that, in 

 the results of such an union, the monstrosity, if repeated, would be in equal pro- 

 portion with the normal type ; that is to say, that the children would be half and 

 half, some taking the peculiarity of the father, and the others being of the purely 

 normal type of the mother ; but you see we have a great preponderance of the 

 abnormal type. Well, this comes to be mixed once more with the pure, the 

 normal type, and the abnormal is again produced in large proportion, notwith- 

 standing the second dilution. Now, what would have happened if these abnormal 

 types had intermarried with each other ? that is to say, suppose the two boys of 

 Salvator had taken it into their heads to marry their first cousins, the two first 

 girls of George, their uncle ? You will remember that these are all of the abnormal 

 type of their grandfather. The result would probably have been, that their off- 

 spring would have been in every case a further development of that abnormal type. 

 You see it is only in the fourth, in the person of Marie, that the tendency, when 

 it appears but slightly in the second generation, is washed out in the third, while 

 the progeny of Andre, who escaped in the first instance, escape altogether. 



" We have in this case a good example of nature's tendency to the perpetuation 

 of a variation. Here it is certainly a variation which carried with it no use or 

 benefit ; and yet you see the tendency to perpetuation may be so strong that, 

 notwithstanding a great admixture of pure blood, the variety continues itself up to 

 the third generation, which is largely marked with it. In this case, as I have 

 said, there was no means of the second generation intermarrying with any but 



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