g, and thus augmenting, any
peculiarity, he will almost certainly unconsciously modify other parts
of the structure, owing to the mysterious laws of the correlation of
growth.

The result of the various, quite unknown, or dimly seen laws of
variation is infinitely complex and diversified. It is well worth while
carefully to study the several treatises published on some of our old
cultivated plants, as on the hyacinth, potato, even the dahlia, etc.;
and it is really surprising to note the endless points in structure and
constitution in which the varieties and sub-varieties differ slightly
from each other. The whole organisation seems to have become plastic,
and tends to depart in some small degree from that of the parental type.

Any variation which is not inherited is unimportant for us. But the
number and diversity of inheritable deviations of structure, both
those of slight and those of considerable physiological importance,
is endless. Dr. Prosper Lucas's treatise, in two large volumes, is the
fullest and the best on this subject. No breeder doubts how strong
is the tendency to inheritance: like produces like is his fundamental
belief: doubts have been thrown on this principle by theoretical writers
alone. When a deviation appears not unfrequently, and we see it in the
father and child, we cannot tell whether it may not be due to the same
original cause acting on both; but when amongst individuals, apparently
exposed to the same conditions, any very rare deviation, due to some
extraordinary combination of circumstances, appears in the parent--say,
once amongst several million individuals--and it reappears in the
child, the mere doctrine of chances almost compels us to attribute
its reappearance to inheritance. Every one must have heard of cases of
albinism, prickly skin, hairy bodies, etc., appearing in several members
of the same family. If strange and rare deviations of structure are
truly inherited, less strange and commoner deviations may be freely
admitted to be inheritable. Perhaps the correct way of viewing the
whole subject, would be, to look at the inheritance of every character
whatever as the rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly.

The laws governing inheritance are quite unknown; no one can say why the
same peculiarity in different individuals of the same species, and in
individuals of different species, is sometimes inherited and sometimes
not so; why the child often reverts in certain characters to