6 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
remember that after all it is only of value as an individual 
- expression of opinion. For my own part, I am inclined to 
think that in many cases the result might be very different 
from that given above. Two influences have, I think, been 
ignored, viz: atavism, or reversion to ancestral characters, 
and the tendency of the members of a variety to breed with 
one another. Keeping to the case described above, I should 
imagine that the numbers of intelligent young mulattoes 
produced in the second, third, fourth and few succeeding © 
generations would to a large extent intermarry, the result 
of which would be that a more or less white aristocracy 
would be formed on the island, including the king and all 
the chief people, the most intelligent men and the bravest 
warriors. Then atavism might produce every now and 
then a much whiter individual—a reversal to the charac- 
teristics of the ancestral Huropean—who, by being highly 
thought of in the whitish aristocracy, would have con- 
siderable influence on the colour and other characteristics 
of the next generation. Now such a white aristocracy 
would be in precisely the same circumstances as a favour- 
able variety competing with its parent species, and as 
Darwin has pointed out, in such a case, “‘If the new variety 
were successful in its battle for life, it would slowly spread 
from a central district, competing with and conquering the 
unchanged individuals on the margins of an ever-increasing 
Ciclo 
It may be said that all this is pure speculation, but an 
actual historic occurrence of a very similar nature has 
been recorded. It is not a case of a shipwrecked white 
man influencing the dark coloured inhabitants of an 
island, but it is the remarkable instance of a single varia- 
tion in a flock of sheep giving rise to a new and most 
* “ Origin of Species,” 6 Ed., pp. 72, 73. 


