limbs of the mother and grandmother; so that here, notwithstanding a double
pentadactyle dilution of the blood, the hexadactyle variety had the best of
it. The same pre-potency of the variety was still more markedly exemplified
in the progeny of two of the other children, Marie and George. Marie (whose
thumbs only were deformed) gave birth to a boy with six toes, and three
other normally formed children; but George, who was not quite so pure a
pentadactyle, begot, first, two girls, each of whom had six fingers and
toes; then a girl with six fingers on each hand and six toes on the right
foot, but only five toes on the left; and lastly, a boy with only five
fingers and toes. In these instances, therefore, the variety, as it were,
leaped over one generation to reproduce itself in full force in the next.
Finally, the purely pentadactyle Andre was the father of many children, not
one of whom departed from the normal parental type.

If a variation which approaches the nature of a monstrosity can strive thus
forcibly to reproduce itself, it is not wonderful that less aberrant
modifications should tend to be preserved even more strongly; and the
history of the Ancon sheep is, in this respect, particularly instructive.
With the "'cuteness" characteristic of their nation, the neighbours of the
Massachusetts farmer imagined it would be an excellent thing if all his
sheep were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Nature upon
the newly-arrived ram; and they advised Wright to kill the old patriarch of
his fold, and install the Ancon ram in his place. The result justified
their sagacious anticipations, and coincided very nearly with what occurred
to the progeny of Gratio Kelleia. The young lambs were almost always either
pure Ancons, or pure ordinary sheep.[Footnote: Colonel Humphreys'
statements are exceedingly explicit on this point:--. "When an Ancon ewe is
impregnated by a common ram, the increase resembles wholly either the ewe
or the ram. The increase of the common ewe impregnated by an Ancon ram
follows entirely the one or the other, without blending any of the