ich
is more easily understood. It is the method of double parentage. The
Barred Plymouth Rock chicken had its origin in such a double ancestry.
The one parent was a Black Java whose color has disappeared entirely
in the cross, but whose single comb with its few large points comes
out clearly in the newly produced fowl. The other parent was a Barred
Dominique. It is to this parent that the Plymouth Rock owes the
interesting cross markings on its feathers. The comb on the head of
the Barred Dominique is of the type known as the rose-comb, having
many rows of slight projections. This has completely disappeared from
the Plymouth Rock fowls. I am told that the skilled chicken fancier
can tell, concerning many points in this fowl, to which of the crossed
ancestors each quality is due. To a certain extent it is undoubtedly
true that here we have the secret of the origin of many of those
interesting people whom we are pleased to call geniuses. They may not
possess any qualities not clearly discernible in various of their near
ancestors, but in them we find what we, for the lack of a better
understanding, call chance combination in one individual of the finer
qualities of many ancestors, and this individual is so placed in life
as to have these qualities developed and strengthened.

Charles Darwin, humanly speaking, may be accounted for as the happy
combination of a double heredity and a favorable environment. He
inherited the scientific inclinations of his grandfather, Erasmus
Darwin, and the patient, sturdy honesty of his other grandfather,
Josiah Wedgwood. These developed under the stimulus of the long
five-year voyage, face to face with the world of nature. This happy
complex produced the master biologist. To believe that he came about
purely by chance requires a great stretch of the imagination. "There's
a divinity that shapes our ends."

We have endeavored to make clear two of the basal ideas underlying
evolution. One of these is responsible for the continued production of
animals or plants of the same kind, preventing the world from becoming
a wild kaleidoscopic and fantastic dream. Heredity is the conservative
force of nature. The other idea underlies the development of new
departures which keep the world from being a dull, dead, unending
repetition of the same monotonous material. Variation is the
progressive tendency in nature.

The third basal idea is that of Multiplication. Animals and plants
multiply; they do no