REVERSION, in law, the right to prop erty which remains after some particular estate has ceased which has been granted by the owner. In the United States this is virtually the only meaning of the term in general usage. In England, where the purchase and holding of annuities is common, a reversion means the present right to a payment to be made at some future time, conditional upon certain con tingencies, as in the case of an insurance fail ing to be paid on the attainment of a certain age, or on the death of the assured. The value of a reversion is easily ascertained when the date of its emergence is fixed, and thus a per son who has a right to receive a certain sum of money at a given time is enabled to sell this right for its just value. See PROPERTY.
In heredity, reversion is the reappearance in offspring of ancestral feature or type. Atavism is nearly synonymous, but properly more restricted, referring to the return of characters observed in less remote ancestors, of the human race especially. Reversion is sometimes seen in cultivated plants, exhibiting features of the wild plant. Domestic animals
do not always return to the feral form and color, when they run wild, but in many instances or in some degree they do. Pigs have resumed stripes and other characteristics of the wild boar. Black is supposed to be the original color of sheep to which some in almost every flock return, despite most careful exclusion for many generations. The crossing of breeds sometimes reproduces at once the original type, as in the case of pigeons and white and black fowls; the former was followed by offspring like the wild blue rock pigeon; the latter be came red like the original jungle-cock of India. In plants there is often a partial morphological reversion, as when stamens are reconverted into petals, or petals into leaves. See Hvintriwrv; MENDEL'S LAW, and consult Darwin, C., Varia tion of Animals and Plants under Domestica tion) (2 vols., New York 1900), and Ewart, J. C., (The Penicuik Experiments) (London, 899).