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Show . I r 30 INHERITANCE. CuAP. XIII. 1 t fi d am on a the male in Southdown sheep-" it is not unusua o n ] . h othus occa- . 1 h , Th horns WJIC lambs some with ~mal orns. _e ds ei~her " grow to the sionally reappear m _ot~er polled bree {o the skin alone and "fu]l size or are cunously attached d S .cL' 11 ' ff" I The Galloways·an uuo r hang " loosely down, or drop 0 • 0 or 150 years, but a cattle have been hornless for the last 10 . . horned calf, with the horn often loosely attached, IS occaswna1 1 y b 2 . orn. . h in their en,rly domestt- There is reason to believe that s eep b . cated condition were " brown or dm. gy black '· " ut eve· n m the time of Dav1' d cer t am. fl oc ks were spoken of as. white c1a s snow During the classi. cal pen·o d th e sheep of Spam are e-3 scrib~d by several ancient authors as being black, red, or th~wlny.' At the present day, notwi' ths t an dI'n g the great care w IC. 1 IS taken to prevent it, particolourecl lambs and. some. entirely black are occasionally dropped by our most l~Igh1yhim:rove~ and valued breeds, such as the Southclowns. Smc~ t e tme o the famous Bakewell, during the last century, the Leicestei~ sheep have b een b r.e c1 WI' th the most scrupulous care ; yet occas4w nTabll y· re -faced, or black-spotted, or wholly b]ac~r lambs appear. IS ~cc=rs still more frequently with t~e less Impr?vecl breeds, such the N orfolks. 5 As bearing on this tendency m sheep to revert :~ dark colours, I may state (though in doing so I tre~ch on the reversion of crossed breeds, and likewise on the subJect of prepo t ency ) th a t the Rev · W · D · Fox was in formed th.a t seven white Southdown ewes were put to a so-called Spamsh ram, which had two small black spots on his sides, and ~he! produce~ . thirteen lambs, all perfectly black. Mr. Fox. beheves that tl1IS ram belonged to a breed which he has ~1m self kept, and which is always spotted with black and white; and he finds that Leicester sheep crossed by rams of this breed always produce black lambs : he has gone on recrossing thes~ crossed sheep with pure white Leicesters during three successive gene- 1 Youatt on Sheep, pp. 20,234. The same fact of loose horns occasionally appearing in hornless breeds bas be~n observed in Germany : Bechstem, • Naturgcsch. Deutscblands,' b. i. s. 362. 2 Youatt on Cattle, pp. 155, 174. 3 Youatt on Sheep, 1838, pp. 17, 145. 4 I have been informed of this fact throuo·h the Rev. W. D. Fox, on the exccl~nt authority of Mr. Wilmot: see, also, remarks on this subject in an orioinal 11rticle in the ' Quarterly Rc~iew,' 184D, p. 3D5. s Youatt, pp. 19, 234. Cru.P. XIII. REVERSION. 31 rations, but always with the same result. Mr. Fox was also told by the friend from whom the spotted breed was procured, that he likewise had gone on for six or seven generations crossing with white sheep, but still black lambs were invariably produced. Similar facts could be given with respect to tailless breeds of various animals. For instance, Mr. Hewitt 6 states that chickens bred from some Rumpless fowls, which were reckoned so good that they won a prize at an exhibition, "in a considerable number of instances were furnished with fully developed tail-feathers." On inquiry, the original breeder of these fowls stated that, from the time when he had fiTst kept them, they had often produced fowls furnished with tails; but that these latter would again reproduce rumpless chickens. Analogous cases of reversion occur in the vegetable kingdom ; thus " from seeds gathered from the finest cultivated varieties of Heartsease (Viola tricolor), plants perfect! y wild both in thei.J.· foliage and their flowers are frequently produced; " 7 but the reversion in this instance is not to a very ancient period, for the best existing varieties of the heartsease are of comparatively modern origin. vVith most of our cultivated vegetables there is some tendency to reversion to what is known to be, or may be presumed to be, their aboriginal state ; and this would be more evident if gardeners did not generally look over their beds of seedlings, and pull up the fa]se plants or "rogues" as they are called. It has already been remarked, that some few seedling appl es and pears generally resemble, but apparently are not identical with, the wild trees fl'om which they are descended, In our turnip 8 and carrot-beds a few plants often "break"that is, flower too soon ; and their roots are generally found to be hard and stringy, as in the parent-species. By the aiel of a little selection, carried on during a few generations, most of our cultivated plants could probably be brought back, without any great change in their conditions of life, to a wild or nearly wild. condition: Mr. Buckman has effected this with the parsnip; 9 6 'The Poultry Book,' by ,Mr. Tegetmeier,' 1866, p. 231. 7 Loudon's' Gard. Mag.,' vol. x., 1834, p. 396 : a nurseryman, with much ex-perience on this subject, has likewise nssured me tbnt this sometimes occurs. 8 ' Gardener's Cru·on.,' 1855, p. 777. 9 Ibid., 1862, p. 721. |