To sum up the whole curious case: wild silver-greys may be considered
as black rabbits which become grey at an early period of life. When
they are crossed with common rabbits, the offspring are said not to
have blended colours, but to take after either parent; and in this
respect they resemble black and albino varieties of most quadrupeds,
which often transmit their colours in this same manner. When they are
crossed with chinchillas, that is, with a paler sub-variety, the young
are at first pure albinoes, but soon become dark-coloured in certain
parts of their bodies, and are then called Himalayans. The young
Himalayans, however, are sometimes at first either pale grey or
completely black, in either case changing after a time to white. In a
future chapter I shall advance a large body of facts showing that, when
two varieties are crossed both of which differ in colour from their
parent-stock, there is a strong tendency in the young to revert to the
aboriginal colour; and what is very remarkable, this reversion
occasionally supervenes, not before birth, but during the growth of the
animal. Hence, if it could be shown that silver-greys and chinchillas
were the offspring of a cross between a black and albino variety with
the colours intimately blended—a supposition in itself not improbable,
and supported by the circumstance of silver-greys in warrens sometimes
producing creamy-white young, which ultimately become black—then all
the above given paradoxical facts on the changes of colour in
silver-greys and in their descendants the Himalayans would come under
the law of reversion, supervening at different periods of growth and in
different degrees, either to the original black or to the original
albino parent-variety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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