Connected, perhaps, with the phenomena we have just been considering is that of _prepotency_.[EA] It is found that, when two individuals of the same race or of different races are crossed, one has a preponderant influence in determining the character of the offspring. Thus the famous bull Favourite is believed to have had a prepotent influence on the short-horn race; and the improved short-horns possess great power in impressing their likeness on other breeds. The phenomena are in some respects curiously variable. In fowls, silkiness of feathers seems to be at once bred out by intercrossing between silk-fowl and any other breed. But in the silky variety of the fan-tail pigeon this character seems prepotent; for, when the variety is crossed with any other small-sized race, the silkiness is invariably transmitted. One may fairly suppose that prepotent characters have unusual stability; but to what causes this stability is due we are at present ignorant. Lastly, we have to consider the phenomenon of _latency_. This is the lying hid of characters and their subsequent emergence. We may distinguish three forms of latency. 1. Where characters lie hid till a certain period of life, and then normally emerge. 2. Where the characters normally lie hid throughout life, but are, under certain circumstances, abnormally developed. 3. Where the characters lie hid throughout life, but appear in the offspring or (sometimes distant) descendants. Latency is often closely connected with correlated variations. Secondary sexual characters, for example, are correlated with the functional maturity or activity of the reproductive organs. They therefore lie hid until these organs are mature and ready for activity. When they are restricted to the male, they normally remain latent throughout the life of the female, but reappear in her male offspring. Under abnormal conditions, such as the removal of the essentially male organs, the secondary sexual characters correlated with them do not appear, or appear in a lessened and modified form. The males may even, under such circumstances, acquire female characters. Thus capons take to sitting, and will bring up young chickens. Conversely, females which have lost their ovaries through disease or from other causes sometimes acquire secondary sexual characters proper to the male. Characters thus normally latent abnormally emerge. Mr. Bland Sutton[EB] gives a case of a hen golden pheasant which "presented the resplendent dress of the cock, but her plumage was not quite so brilliant; she had no spurs, and the iris was not encircled by the ring of white so conspicuous in the male." Her ovary was no larger than a split pea.