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and we may guess how strong the instinctive inclination for rever- 
sion to typical form is, when we look abroad among our acquaint- 
ances and see, notwithstanding the manifold inducements to disre- 
gard the promptings of nature consequent upon the artificial state 
in which we live, how few have refused compliance to this mys- 
terious law. The control of parents, the desire for easily acquired 
wealth, the promptings of ambition, the cravings of vanity, and the 
accidents of opportunity, all suggesting other matrimonial con- 
nections, and, backed with what may be looked on as of more im- 
portance than either, the strong control over one’s own feelings and 
desires acquired by the habits of civilised life, generally give way 
before this imperious constraint for reversion to type. It is less 
easy to give similar evidence of this phase of the revertive principle 
in other animals. In the wild, we only see its result in the unifor- 
mity of all individuals ; in the domestic, man interferes, and by his 
breeding compels departure from the type, and increases it. But 
I believe it requires man’s greatest care and watchfulness to pre- 
vent reversion, and that a breed neglected retrogrades in a very 
short time ; and what is called the prepotent influence of pollen 
from the typical plant over that of neighbouring varieties is an in- 
stance which will be admitted by most hybridizers; and an analogous 
influence may be equally exercised in the case of hermaphrodites 
and fixed animals. This is my belief : but it is not that of all ; the 
possibility of the new variety made by breeders and gardeners revert- 
ing to their parent forms is doubted by many, and denied by some. 
Mr Darwin of course disputes it, or at least does not admit it, and 
desiderates the evidence on which the statement has been so often 
made, that our domestic varieties, when run wild, gradually but 
certainly revert in character to their aboriginal stocks. Such a 
demand for proof may not be capable of immediate satisfaction. But 
where a fact is very generally accepted* as true, it will usually 
* The point is one well worthy the attention of those who may have the 
opportunity of testing it. I have no doubt that many unscientific breeders could 
give at once instances which would bear upon it ; but it will be observed that 
the question of whether they do bear upon it is one not unattended with diffi- 
culty : for instance, in our breeds of cattle how are we to know when a race or 
variety is reverting to its parent type — what was the parent form of our do- 
mestic cattle ? — Quien sabe. But that they naturally retrograde or go away 
from the something which has been the aim set up in breeding to something 
else, certainly cannot be denied. 
