The guinea-fowl in the West Indies, when feral, seems to vary more than in the
domesticated state.
With respect to plants run wild, Dr. Hooker (13/14. 'Flora of Australia' 1859
Introduction page 9.) has strongly insisted on what slight evidence the common
belief in their reversion to a primitive state rests. Godron (13/15. 'De
l'Espece' tome 2 pages 54, 58, 60.) describes wild turnips, carrots, and
celery; but these plants in their cultivated state hardly differ from their
wild prototypes, except in the succulency and enlargement of certain parts,--
characters which would certainly be lost by plants growing in poor soil and
struggling with other plants. No cultivated plant has run wild on so enormous
a scale as the cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) in La Plata. Every botanist who
has seen it growing there, in vast beds, as high as a horse's back, has been
struck with its peculiar appearance; but whether it differs in any important
point from the cultivated Spanish form, which is said not to be prickly like
its American descendant, or whether it differs from the wild Mediterranean
species, which is said not to be social (though this may be due merely to the
nature of the conditions), I do not know.]
REVERSION TO CHARACTERS DERIVED FROM A CROSS, IN THE CASE OF SUB-VARIETIES,
RACES, AND SPECIES.
When an individual having some recognisable peculiarity unites with another of
the same sub-variety, not having the peculiarity in question, it often
reappears in the descendants after an interval of several generations. Every
one must have noticed, or heard from old people of children closely resembling
in appearance or mental disposition, or in so small and complex a character as
expression, one of their grandparents, or some more distant collateral
relation. Very many anomalies of structure and diseases (13/16. Mr. Sedgwick
gives many instances in the 'British and Foreign Med.-Chirurg. Review' April
and July 1863 pages 448, 188.) of which instances have been given in the last
chapter, have come into a family from one parent, and have reappeared in the
progeny after passing over two or three generations. The following case has
been communicated to me on good authority, and may, I believe, be fully
trusted: a pointer-bitch produced seven puppies; four were marked with blue
and white, which is so unusual a colour with pointers that she was thought to
have played false with one of the greyhounds, and the whole litter was
condemned; but the gamekeeper was permitted to save one as a curiosity. Two
years afterwards a friend of the owner saw the young dog, and declared that he
was the image of his old pointer-bitch Sappho, the only blue and white pointer
of pure descent which he had ever seen. This led to close inquiry, and it was
proved that he was the great-great-grandson of Sappho; so that, according to
the common expression, he had only 1/16th of her blood in his veins. I may
give one other instance, on the authority of Mr. R. Walker, a large cattle-
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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