Or, secondly, that each breed, even the purest, has
within a dozen, or at most within a score, of generations, been crossed by
the rock-pigeon: I say within a dozen or twenty generations, for no
instance is known of crossed descendants reverting to an ancestor of
foreign blood, removed by a greater number of generations. In a breed
which has been crossed only once the tendency to revert to any character
derived from such a cross will naturally become less and less, as in each
succeeding generation there will be less of the foreign blood; but when
there has been no cross, and there is a tendency in the breed to revert to
a character which was lost during some former generation, this tendency,
for all that we can see to the contrary, may be transmitted undiminished
for an indefinite number of generations. These two distinct cases of
reversion are often confounded together by those who have written on
inheritance.
Lastly, the hybrids or mongrels from between all the breeds of the pigeon
are perfectly fertile, as I can state from my own observations, purposely
made, on the most distinct breeds. Now, hardly any cases have been
ascertained with certainty of hybrids from two quite distinct species of
animals being perfectly fertile. Some authors believe that long-continued
domestication eliminates this strong tendency to sterility in species.
>From the history of the dog, and of some other domestic animals, this
conclusion is probably quite correct, if applied to species closely related
to each other.
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