{261} <Note in original.> Boitard and Corbie on outer edging red in tail of bird,--so bars on wing, white or black or brown, or white edged with black or <illegible>: analogous to marks running through genera but with different colours. Tail coloured in pigeons. {262} <Note in original.> Oxalis and Gentian. <In Gentians blue, yellow and reddish colours occur. In Oxalis yellow, purple, violet and pink.> _External characters of Hybrids and Mongrels._ There is, however, as it appears to me, a more important method of comparison between species and races, namely the character of the offspring{263} when species are crossed and when races are crossed: I believe, in no one respect, except in sterility, is there any difference. It would, I think, be a marvellous fact, if species have been formed by distinct acts of creation, that they should act upon each other in uniting, like races descended from a common stock. In the first place, by repeated crossing one species can absorb and wholly obliterate the characters of another, or of several other species, in the same manner as one race will absorb by crossing another race. Marvellous, that one act of creation should absorb another or even several acts of creation! The offspring of species, that is hybrids, and the offspring of races, that is mongrels, resemble each other in being either intermediate in character (as is most frequent in hybrids) or in resembling sometimes closely one and sometimes the other parent; in both the offspring produced by the same act of conception sometimes differ in their degree of resemblance; both hybrids and mongrels sometimes retain a certain part or organ very like that of either parent, both, as we have seen, become in succeeding generations variable; and this tendency to vary can be transmitted by both; in both for many generations there is a strong tendency to reversion to their ancestral form. In the case of a hybrid laburnum and of a supposed mongrel vine different parts of the same plants took after each of their two parents. In the hybrids from some species, and in the mongrel of some races, the offspring differ according as which of the two species, or of the two races, is the father (as in the common mule and hinny) and which the mother. Some races will breed together, which differ so greatly in size, that the dam often perishes in labour; so it is with some species when crossed; when the dam of one species has borne offspring to the male of another species, her succeeding offspring are sometimes stained (as in Lord Morton's mare by the quagga, wonderful as the fact{264} is) by this first cross; so agriculturists positively affirm is the case when a pig or sheep of one breed has produced offspring by the sire of another breed.