The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol 2 | Page 8

and
aboriginally from several distinct species. Feral cats, both in Europe
and La Plata, are regularly striped; in some cases they have grown to an

unusually large size, but do not differ from the domestic animal in any
other character. When variously-coloured tame rabbits are turned out in
Europe, they generally reacquire the colouring of the wild animal; there
can be no doubt that this does really occur, but we should remember
that oddly- coloured and conspicuous animals would suffer much from
beasts of prey and from being easily shot; this at least was the opinion
of a gentleman who tried to stock his woods with a nearly white variety;
if thus destroyed, they would be supplanted by, instead of being
transformed into, the common rabbit. We have seen that the feral
rabbits of Jamaica, and especially of Porto Santo, have assumed new
colours and other new characters. The best known case of reversion,
and that on which the widely spread belief in its universality apparently
rests, is that of pigs. These animals have run wild in the West Indies,
South America, and the Falkland Islands, and have everywhere
acquired the dark colour, the thick bristles, and great tusks of the wild
boar; and the young have reacquired longitudinal stripes. But even in
the case of the pig, Roulin describes the half-wild animals in different
parts of South America as differing in several respects. In Louisiana the
pig (13/12. Dureau de la Malle 'Comptes Rendus' tome 41 1855 page
807. From the statements above given, the author concludes that the
wild pigs of Louisiana are not descended from the European Sus scrofa.)
has run wild, and is said to differ a little in form, and much in colour,
from the domestic animal, yet does not closely resemble the wild boar
of Europe. With pigeons and fowls (13/13. Capt. W. Allen, in his
'Expedition to the Niger' states that fowls have run wild on the island of
Annobon, and have become modified in form and voice. The account is
so meagre and vague that it did not appear to me worth copying; but I
now find that Dureau de la Malle ('Comptes Rendus' tome 41 1855
page 690) advances this as a good instance of reversion to the primitive
stock, and as confirmatory of a still more vague statement in classical
times by Varro.), it is not known what variety was first turned out, nor
what character the feral birds have assumed. The guinea-fowl in the
West Indies, when feral, seems to vary more than in the domesticated
state.
With respect to plants run wild, Dr. Hooker (13/14. 'Flora of Australia'
1859 Introduction page 9.) has strongly insisted on what slight

evidence the common belief in their reversion to a primitive state rests.
Godron (13/15. 'De l'Espece' tome 2 pages 54, 58, 60.) describes wild
turnips, carrots, and celery; but these plants in their cultivated state
hardly differ from their wild prototypes, except in the succulency and
enlargement of certain parts,-- characters which would certainly be lost
by plants growing in poor soil and struggling with other plants. No
cultivated plant has run wild on so enormous a scale as the cardoon
(Cynara cardunculus) in La Plata. Every botanist who has seen it
growing there, in vast beds, as high as a horse's back, has been struck
with its peculiar appearance; but whether it differs in any important
point from the cultivated Spanish form, which is said not to be prickly
like its American descendant, or whether it differs from the wild
Mediterranean species, which is said not to be social (though this may
be due merely to the nature of the conditions), I do not know.]
REVERSION TO CHARACTERS DERIVED FROM A CROSS, IN
THE CASE OF SUB-VARIETIES, RACES, AND SPECIES.
When an individual having some recognisable peculiarity unites with
another of the same sub-variety, not having the peculiarity in question,
it often reappears in the descendants after an interval of several
generations. Every one must have noticed, or heard from old people of
children closely resembling in appearance or mental disposition, or in
so small and complex a character as expression, one of their
grandparents, or some more distant collateral relation. Very many
anomalies of structure and diseases (13/16. Mr. Sedgwick gives many
instances in the 'British and Foreign Med.-Chirurg. Review' April and
July 1863 pages 448, 188.) of which instances have been given in the
last chapter, have come into a family from one parent, and have
reappeared in the progeny after passing over two or three generations.
The following case has been communicated to me on good authority,
and may, I believe, be fully trusted: a pointer-bitch produced seven
puppies; four were marked with blue and white, which is so unusual a
colour with pointers that she was thought