It deserves notice that it is of no importance to a very young animal, as long as it is nourished and protected by its parent, whether most of its characters are acquired a little earlier or later in life.

It would not signify, for instance, to a bird which obtained its food by having a much-curved beak whether or not while young it possessed a beak of this shape, as long as it was fed by its parents.
I have stated in the first chapter, that at whatever age any variation first appears in the parent, it tends to reappear at a corresponding age in the offspring.

Certain variations can only appear at corresponding ages; for instance, peculiarities in the caterpillar, cocoon, or imago states of the silk-moth; or, again, in the full-grown horns of cattle.
But variations which, for all that we can see might have appeared either earlier or later in life, likewise tend to reappear at a corresponding age in the offspring and parent.

I am far from meaning that this is invariably the case, and I could give several exceptional cases of variations (taking the word in the largest sense) which have supervened at an earlier age in the child than in the parent.
These two principles, namely, that slight variations generally appear at a not very early period of life, and are inherited at a corresponding not early period, explain, as I believe, all the above specified leading facts in embryology.

But first let us look to a few analogous cases in our domestic varieties.