The Perpetuation of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission and Variation | Page 8

the
same kind. It is strictly true that there are never any two specimens
which are exactly alike; however similar, they will always differ in
some certain particular.
Now let us go back to Atavism,--to the hereditary tendency I spoke of.
What will come of a variation when you breed from it, when Atavism
comes, if I may say so, to intersect variation? The two cases of which I
have mentioned the history, give a most excellent illustration of what
occurs. Gratio Kelleia, the Maltese, married when he was twenty-two
years of age, and, as I suppose there were no six-fingered ladies in
Malta, he married an ordinary five-fingered person. The result of that
marriage was four children; the first, who was christened Salvator, had
six fingers and six toes, like his father; the second was George, who

had five fingers and toes, but one of them was deformed, showing a
tendency to variation; the third was Andre; he had five fingers and five
toes, quite perfect; the fourth was a girl, Marie; she had five fingers and
five toes, but her thumbs were deformed, showing a tendency toward
the sixth.
These children grew up, and when they came to adult years, they all
married, and of course it happened that they all married five-fingered
and five-toed persons. Now let us see what were the results. Salvator
had four children; they were two boys, a girl, and another boy; the first
two boys and the girl were six-fingered and six-toed like their
grandfather; the fourth boy had only five fingers and five toes. George
had only four children; there were two girls with six fingers and six
toes; there was one girl with six fingers and five toes on the right side,
and five fingers and five toes on the left side, so that she was half and
half. The last, a boy, had five fingers and five toes. The third, Andre,
you will recollect, was perfectly well-formed, and he had many
children whose hands and feet were all regularly developed. Marie, the
last, who, of course, married a man who had only five fingers, had four
children; the first, a boy, was born with six toes, but the other three
were normal.
Now observe what very extraordinary phenomena are presented here.
You have an accidental variation arising from what you may call a
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 case only as far as the
third generation. Certainly it would have been an exceedingly curious
thing if we could have traced this matter any further; had the cousins
intermarried, a six-fingered variety of the human race might have been
set up.
To show you that this supposition is by no means an unreasonable one,
let me now point out what took