5 tte gaa NGA Peed oR ee ee SS CURR eee et ee 
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1881. ] Lifects of Reversion to the Wild State, etc. RS 
- completed work, aggregating nearly twelve hundred pages, stand 
as a most pleasing monument to the ability of the authors on the 
one hand, and on the other to the generosity of the business men 
of California, who voluntarily defrayed all the expenses of prepa- 
ration and publication. 
F. Periodical Publications —The Bulletin of the Torrey Botani- 
cal Club and the Botanical Gazette continued throughout the year 
as our only exclusively botanical journals, Each gave good evi- 
dence of substantial growth. The botanical departments of the 
American Y¥ournal of Science and the NATURALIST were main- 
tained as usual. Botanical articles frequently appeared also in 
the Gardener's Monthl ly, American Agriculturist, American 
Monthly Microscopical Yournal and the American Y¥ournal of 
Microscopy, 
-O: 
EFFECTS OF REVERSION TO THE WILD STATE IN 
res OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
BY HON. J. D. CATON, 
UNIFORMITY of form, color and habit in individuals 
among the various species of wild animals, is almost uni- 
versa‘ly observed, and the loss of this uniformity under the influ- 
€nce of domestication, if less universal, is very general. How 
long it took to produce these changes in the horse and the ox, 
the sheep and the goat, we cannot know, for these were subdued 
_ to domestication before events were recorded which might tell us 
of the struggle. That some animals were more readily influenced 
by domestication than others, we know. How readily the wild 
turkey changes in form, color and habits under the influence 
Of domestication I have demonstrated by my own careful ex- 
Periments, an account of which I gave in the AMERICAN NATu- — 
RAList for June, 1877. That the domesticated reindeer of Lap- 
land have become parti-colored, while their wild brethren of the 
Mountains all about. them retain a uniform color, I have shown 
a in “The Antelope and Deer of America,” p. 330, and in “A 
Summer in Norway,” p. 223. The deer in the parks of England 
and Ireland have become unstable in color, although they have been 
_ Subjected to the influence of domestication for a much shorter 
_ Period than have the reindeer of Lapland. These are the most 
_ Striking instances among the qua rumana, which occur to me, to 
