monstrosity; you have that monstrosity tendency or variation diluted in
the first instance by an admixture with a female of normal construction,
and you would naturally expect that, in the results of such an union,
the monstrosity, if repeated, would be in equal proportion with the
normal type; that is to say, that the children would be half and half,
some taking the peculiarity of the father, and the others being of the
purely normal type of the mother; but you see we have a great
preponderance of the abnormal type. Well, this comes to be mixed once
more with the pure, the normal type, and the abnormal is again produced
in large proportion, notwithstanding the second dilution. Now what
would have happened if these abnormal types had intermarried with each
other; that is to say, suppose the two boys of Salvator had taken it
into their heads to marry their first cousins, the two first girls of
George, their uncle? You will remember that these are all of the
abnormal type of their grandfather. The result would probably have
been, that their offspring would have been in every case a further
development of that abnormal type. You see it is only in the fourth,
in the person of Marie, that the tendency, when it appears but slightly
in the second generation, is washed out in the third, while the progeny
of Andre, who escaped in the first instance, escape altogether.

We have in this case a good example of nature's tendency to the
perpetuation of a variation. Here it is certainly a variation which
carried with it no use or benefit; and yet you see the tendency to
perpetuation may be so strong, that, notwithstanding a great admixture
of pure blood, the variety continues itself up to the third generation,
which is largely marked with it. In this case, as I have said, there
was no means of the second generation intermarrying with any but
five-fingered persons, and the question naturally suggests itself, What
would have been the result of such marriage? Reaumur narrates this