one is often prepotent over the other in
transmitting its own 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. Prepotentcy 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
{84} 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 can
see how secondary sexual characters may first have arisen under nature;
their preservation and accumulation being dependent on their service to
either sex.

At whatever period of life a new character first appears, it generally
remains latent in the offspring until a corresponding age is attained, and
then it is developed. When this rule fails, the child generally exhibits
the character at an earlier period than the parent. On this principle of
inheritance at corresponding periods, we can understand how it is that most
animals display from the germ to maturity such a marvellous succession of
characters.

Finally, though much remains obscure with respect to Inheritance, we may
look at the following laws as fairly well established. Firstly, a tendency
in every character, new and old, to be transmitted by seminal a