of pugs.
In a word, not only species, but varieties do tend to breed true; the
child does resemble its parent or parents. No doubt the resemblance is
not absolute: there is variation as well as inheritance. Sometimes the
variation may be recognised as a feature possessed by a grandparent or
even by some collateral relative such as an uncle or great-uncle;
sometimes this may not be the case, though the non-recognition of the
likeness does not in any way preclude the possibility that the
peculiarity may have been also possessed by some other member of the
family. But on the whole the offspring does closely resemble its
parents; that is to say, not only the species and the variety but the
individual "breeds true." "Look like dey are bleedzed to take atter der
pa," as Uncle Remus said when he was explaining how the rabbit comes to
have a bobtail. Moreover this resemblance is not merely in the great
general features. Apart from monstrosities, the children of human beings
are human beings; the children of white parents have white skins, those
of black progenitors are black. Commonly, though not always by any
means, the children of dark-haired parents are themselves dark-haired,
and so on. But smaller features are also transmitted, and transmitted
too for many generations; for example, the well-known case of the
Hapsburg lip, visible in so many portraits of Spanish monarchs and their
near relatives, and visible in life to-day. Again, there are families in
which the inner part of one eyebrow has the hairs growing upwards
instead of in the ordinary way, a feature which is handed on from one
generation to another. Even more minute features than this have been
known to be transmissible and transmitted, such as a tiny pit in the
skin on the ear or on the face. In fact, there is hardly any feature, no
matter how small, which may not become a hereditary possession.

If in-and-in breeding occur, as it may do amongst human beings in a
locality much removed from other places of habitation, it may even
happen that what may be looked upon as a variety of the human race may
arise, though when it arises it is always easy to wipe it out and
restore things to the normal by the introduction of fresh blood, to use
the misleading term commonly employed, where the Biblical word "seed"
comes much nearer to the facts.

Thus there is a well-authenticated case in France (in Brittany if I
remember right) of a six-fingered race which existed for a nu