pure breeds, written as it were in invisible ink, yet ready at any time to be evolved under certain conditions. What these conditions precisely are, we do not know. But any cause which disturbs the organisation or constitution seems to be sufficient. A cross certainly gives a strong tendency to the reappearance of long-lost characters, both corporeal and mental. In the case of plants, this tendency is much stronger with those species which have been crossed after long cultivation and which therefore have had their constitutions disturbed by this cause as well as by crossing, than with species which have always lived under their natural conditions and have then been crossed. A return, also, of domesticated animals and cultivated plants to a wild state favours reversion; but the tendency under these circumstances has been much exaggerated. When individuals of the same family which differ somewhat, and when races or species are crossed, the one is often prepotent over the other in transmitting its character. A race may possess a strong power of inheritance, and yet when crossed, as we have seen with trumpeter-pigeons, yield to the prepotency of every other race. Prepotency of transmission may be equal in the two sexes of the same species, but often runs more strongly in one sex. It plays an important part in determining the rate at which one race can be modified or wholly absorbed by repeated crosses with another. We can seldom tell what makes one race or species prepotent over another; but it sometimes depends on the same character being present and visible in one parent, and latent or potentially present in the other. Characters may first appear in either sex, but oftener in the male than in the female, and afterwards be transmitted to the offspring of the same sex. In this case we may feel confident that the peculiarity in question is really present though latent in the opposite sex! hence the father may transmit through his daughter any character to his grandson; and the mother conversely to her granddaughter. We thus learn, and the fact is an important one, that transmission and development are distinct powers. Occasionally these two powers seem to be antagonistic, or incapable of combination in the same individual; for several cases have been recorded in which the son has not directly inherited a character from his father, or directly transmitted it to his son, but has received it by transmission through his non-affected mother, and transmitted it through his non-affected daughter. Owing to inheritance being limited by sex, we see how secondary sexual characters may have arisen under nature; their preservation and accumulation being dependent on their service to either sex.