But hereditary diseases and
some other facts make me believe that the rule has a wider extension, and
that, when there is no apparent reason why a peculiarity should appear at
any particular age, yet that it does tend to appear in the offspring at the
same period at which it first appeared in the parent. I believe this rule
to be of the highest importance in explaining the laws of embryology.
These remarks are of course confined to the first APPEARANCE of the
peculiarity, and not to the primary cause which may have acted on the
ovules or on the male element; in nearly the same manner as the increased
length of the horns in the offspring from a short-horned cow by a
long-horned bull, though appearing late in life, is clearly due to the male
element.
Having alluded to the subject of reversion, I may here refer to a statement
often made by naturalists--namely, that our domestic varieties, when run
wild, gradually but invariably revert in character to their aboriginal
stocks. Hence it has been argued that no deductions can be drawn from
domestic races to species in a state of nature. I have in vain endeavoured
to discover on what decisive facts the above statement has so often and so
boldly been made. There would be great difficulty in proving its truth:
we may safely conclude that very many of the most strongly marked domestic
varieties could not possibly live in a wild state.
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