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 to reproduce itself. Even those slight variations which constitute individual peculiarities are so constantly reproduced, that we look in children for what is termed "the family likeness" to their parents; and where there is any decided departure from the normal type, this has a still stronger tendency to reappear in the progeny of the individual. Among naturalists, this tendency to revert to the ancestral type is termed Atavism, from Atavus, an ancestor. Professor Husley, in his Lectures on "The Phenomena of Organic Nature," has entered very fully into this subject, and he gives some striking illustrations of the mode in which varieties are established. He states:—

"One very remarkable case came under Reanmur's notice of a variation in the form of a human member, in the person of a Maltese, of the name of Gratio Kelleia, who was born with six fingers upon each hand, and the like number of toes to each of his feet. That was a case of spontaneous variation. Nobody knows why he was born with that number of fingers and toes, and as we don't know, we call it a case of 'spontaneous' variation. There is another remarkable case also. I select these, because they happen to have been observed and noted very carefully at the time. It frequently happens that a variation occurs, but the persons who notice it do not take any care in noting down the particulars, until at length, when inquiries come to be made, the exact circumstances are forgotten; and hence, multitudinous as may be such 'spontaneous' variations, it is exceedingly difficult to get at the origin of them.

"The second case is one of which you may find the whole details in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for the year 1813, in a paper communicated by Colonel Humphrey to the President of the Royal Society,—'On a New Variety in the Breed of Sheep,' giving an account of a very remarkable breed of sheep, which at one time was well known in the northern states of America, and which went by the name of the Ancon or the Otter breed of sheep. In the year 1791, there was a farmer of the name of Seth Wright in Massachusetts, who had a floek of sheep, consisting of a ram, and, I think, of some twelve or thirteen ewes. Of this flock of ewes, one at the breeding time bore a lamb which was very singularly formed; it had a very long body, very short legs, and those legs were bowed! I will tell you by-and-by how this singular variation in the breed of sheep came to be noted, and to have the prominence that it now has. For the present, I mention only these two cases; but the extent of variation in the breed of animals is perfectly obvious to any one who has studied natural history with ordinary attention, or to any person who compares animals with others of the same kind.

"Now let us go back to Atavism,—to the hereditary tendency I spoke of. What will come of a variation when you breed from it, when Atavism comes, if I may say so, to intersect variation? The two cases of which I have mentioned the history, give a most excellent illustration of what occurs. Gratio Kelleia, the Maltese, married when he was twenty-two years of age, and, as I suppose there were no six-fingered ladies in Malta, he married an ordinary five-fingored person. The result of that marriage was four children; the first, who was christened