terms of REVERSION, or THROWING-BACK; by the French PAS-EN-ARRIERE; and by the
German RUCKSCHLAG, or RUCKSCHRITT. 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 in the
last case we must attribute this 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
the son more closely resembles his maternal than his paternal grand-sire 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 as the mother cannot possess or
exhibit such male attributes, the child must inherit 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 one another; 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 an individual with some
distinguishable character, a race, or species, has at some former period been
crossed, and a character derived from this cross, after having disappeared
during one or several generations, suddenly reappears. A third class,
differing only in the manner of reproduction, might be formed to include all