UAL CHARACTERS--UNEQUAL
DEVELOPMENT OF THE TWO SIDES OF THE BODY--APPEARANCE WITH ADVANCING AGE
OF CHARACTERS DERIVED FROM A CROSS--THE GERM WITH ALL ITS LATENT
CHARACTERS A WONDERFUL OBJECT--MONSTROSITIES--PELORIC FLOWERS DUE IN
SOME CASES TO REVERSION.

The great principle of inheritance to be discussed in this chapter has been
recognised by agriculturists and authors of various nations, as shown by
the scientific term _Atavism_, derived from atavus, an ancestor; by the
English terms of _Reversion_, or _Throwing back_; by the French
_Pas-en-arriere_; and by the German _Rueck-schlag_, or _Rueck-schritt_.
When the child resembles either grandparent more closely than its immediate
parents, our attention is not much arrested, though in truth the fact is
highly remarkable; but when the child resembles some remote ancestor, or
some distant member in a collateral line,--and we must attribute the latter
case to the descent of all the members from a common progenitor,--we feel a
just degree of astonishment. When one parent alone displays some
newly-acquired and generally inheritable character, and the offspring do
not inherit it, the cause may lie in the other parent having the power of
prepotent transmission. But when both parents are similarly characterised,
and the child does not, whatever the cause may be, inherit the character in
question, but resembles its grandparents, we have one of the simplest cases
of reversion. We continually see another and even more simple case of
atavism, though not generally included under this head, namely, when {29}
the son more closely resembles his maternal than his paternal grandsire in
some male attribute, as in any peculiarity in the beard of man, the horns
of the bull, the hackles or comb of the cock, or, as in certain diseases
necessarily confined to the male sex; for the mother cannot possess or
exhibit such male attributes, yet the child has inherited them, through her
blood, from his maternal grandsire.

The cases of reversion may be divided into two main classes, which,
however, in some instances, blend into each other; namely, first, those
occurring in a variety or race which has not been crossed, but has lost by
variation some character that it formerly possessed, and which afterwards
reappears. The second class includes all cases in which a distinguishable
individual, sub-variety, race, or species, has at some former period been
crossed with a distinct form, and