GALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF .INHERITANCE I /I 



horses is, but this is not enough. To warrant his deductions, he 

 must either prove that inheritance is the controlling factor in fixing 

 the type, or else he must show that, in the long run, all the other 

 factors will balance ; and this, it seems to me, he fails to prove. 

 He has studied, in 150 fraternal couples, or children of the same 

 parents, the frequency with which the same pattern occurs on the 

 same finger of both, and he finds that, when marked on a scale in 

 which o indicates no resemblance, and 100 the greatest possible 

 relationship, they show 10 of relationship. This number is great 

 enough to prove the influence of inheritance, but it seems to me 

 to be too small to show that the patterns are themselves directly 

 inherited; for it seems to me to indicate that they are indirectly 

 influenced by some other inherited character, such, perhaps, as the 

 ratio between the growth in the embryo of the ball of the finger 

 and that of the nail. 



Inheritance is not, unfortunately, a word which is always used 

 with scientific precision, for it has many meanings. Most of the 

 qualities which give a horse its value in the market, as compared 

 with other horses, are due to breeding, but this word has many 

 meanings. Orlando says: "His horses are bred better; for besides 

 that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their man- 

 age, and to that end riders dearly hired." The "breeding jennet, 

 lusty, young, and proud," seems to be a wild mare, with no 

 breeding in the first sense, and the horse which did not lack 

 what a horse should have, " Round-hoofed, short-jointed fetlocks 

 shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostrils 

 wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong, 

 Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttocks, tender hide," is a thorough- 

 bred. 



Recent speculations have forced us to attend to the difference 

 between these meanings of the word. In the last sense breeding 

 is the influence of ancestry, and it may practically be treated as 

 synonymous with the word ancestry. In the first sense, breeding, 

 broadly used, is that influence of the ontogenetic environment for 

 which that most objectionable term, "acquired characters," has 

 been thoughtlessly adopted; for no one who believes that species 

 are mutable can believe that there is any character which has not 

 been "acquired." 



