Of course it is understood that the general mass of characters or qualities belonging to any creature are inherited by one generation from its immediate ancestors and transmitted to its immediate descendants, so that for a long period there would be a large number of individuals in the world united into a group by common characters, which according to their supposed importance we might call specific or generic. But besides this, there is the very curious principle of _Reversion_ to be taken into account, as largely conducing to the comparative permanence of species. In Norway, I believe, when the father’s name is Jack, and the son’s name is Tom, Tom is called Tom Jackson, and Tom is in the habit of giving his own eldest son the grandfather’s name, and then Tom Jackson’s son is called Jack Tomson. Now, in the same way, in nature it not unfrequently happens that when a long-nosed man is father of a short-nosed son, the son of the short-nosed man inherits by reversion the more elongated feature of his grandsire. Under certain conditions, which however greatly limit it, the operation of this principle of Reversion may extend, so far as we know, to any quality whatever after an interval of any number of generations. The tendency, therefore, is to the permanence of species, and yet, as will be shown in the sequel, it has furnished Mr. Darwin with an additional argument to prove that species are not permanent. It must be borne in mind that when a character reverts from a very distant ancestor, the creature which inherits it will have numerous other qualities, all probably more or less differing from those originally united to the reversionary character; just as if, in the School of Art, a picture by Raffaelle were shown to fifty pupils, and when it had been copied by the first, the second pupil were to make a copy of the copy, and so on to the end, each of the copies would no doubt differ more and more from the original, and yet in the very last, by the help of memory or sympathetic genius, there might be some beauty not to be found in any of the others, recalling the hand of the great master; while it is true, that if the sketch were something exceedingly simple, the fiftieth copy, and all the intermediate ones, might be almost exactly like the original; and so in nature, exceedingly simple organisms are seemingly reproduced for almost endless generations with no change, or scarcely any.