When turnspit dogs and ancon sheep, both of which have dwarfed limbs, are
crossed with common breeds, the offspring are not intermediate in structure,
but take after either parent. When tailless or hornless animals are crossed
with perfect animals, it frequently, but by no means invariably, happens that
the offspring are either furnished with these organs in a perfect state, or
are quite destitute of them. According to Rengger, the hairless condition of
the Paraguay dog is either perfectly or not at all transmitted to its mongrel
offspring; but I have seen one partial exception in a dog of this parentage
which had part of its skin hairy, and part naked, the parts being distinctly
separated as in a piebald animal. When Dorking fowls with five toes are
crossed with other breeds, the chickens often have five toes on one foot and
four on the other. Some crossed pigs raised by Sir R. Heron between the solid-
hoofed and common pig had not all four feet in an intermediate condition, but
two feet were furnished with properly divided, and two with united hoofs.
Analogous facts have been observed with plants: Major Trevor Clarke crossed
the little, glabrous-leaved, annual stock (Matthiola), with pollen of a large,
red-flowered, rough-leaved, biennial stock, called cocardeau by the French,
and the result was that half the seedlings had glabrous and the other half
rough leaves, but none had leaves in an intermediate state. That the glabrous
seedlings were the product of the rough-leaved variety, and not accidentally
of the mother-plant's own pollen, was shown by their tall and strong habit of
growth. (15/19. 'Internat. Hort. and Bot. Congress of London' 1866.) in the
succeeding generations raised from the rough-leaved crossed seedlings, some
glabrous plants appeared, showing that the glabrous character, though
incapable of blending with and modifying the rough leaves, was all the time
latent in this family of plants. The numerous plants formerly referred to,
which I raised from reciprocal crosses between the peloric and common
Antirrhinum, offer a nearly parallel case; for in the first generation all the
plants resembled the common form, and in the next generation, out of one
hundred and thirty-seven plants, two alone were in an intermediate condition,
the others perfectly resembling either the peloric or common form. Major
Trevor Clarke also fertilised the above-mentioned red-flowered stock with
pollen from the purple Queen stock, and about half the seedlings scarcely
differed in habit, and not at all in the red colour of the flower, from the
mother-plant, the other half bearing blossoms of a rich purple, closely like
those of the paternal plant. Gartner crossed many white and yellow-flowered
species and varieties of Verbascum; and these colours were never blended, but
the offspring bore either pure white or pure yellow blossoms; the former in
the larger proportion. (15/20. 'Bastarderzeugung' s. 307. Kolreuter 'Dritte
Fortsetszung' s.
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