It is a retrogressive process producing characteristic changes in the fine connectivetissue fibrils.
Since the tribes practised far more in-breeding than out-breeding, the tendency was toward forming not only verbal linguistic groups, but biological varieties; the weaker the tribe, the fewer the captures, the greater the isolation and harder the conditions - producing dolichocephaly, dwarfism and other retrogressive characteristics.
Thirdly, those members of a group which, whilst exhibiting undoubted structural characters indicative of their proper assignment to that group, yet are simpler than and inferior in elaboration of their organization to other members of the group, are not necessarily representatives of the earlier and primitive phases in the development of the group - but are very often examples of retrogressive change or degeneration.
At a later date, Chief Justice Kotze, when on circuit, warned the Boers that in its retrogressive action the government was undermining the grondwet or constitution of the state.
Among invertebrates similar analogous groups also develop. This is especially marked in retrogressive, though also wellknown in progressive series.