THE STUDY OF INHERITANCE. 487 



some innate principle of specific stability whicli is an essential 

 and immutable attribute of each species of living things ; but the 

 accumulation of conclusive evidence of the mutability of species 

 has driven this conception out of the field. Most naturalists now 

 regard the type as nothing but that normal which is most per- 

 fectly fitted to the environment, and they hold that it is kept true 

 through the extinction of aberrant individuals by selection. 



According to this view, which seems to be supported by ample 

 evidence, the stability of species is due to survival to the same 

 mechanism which brings about the mutability of species. 



Galton is led by his statistical studies of vital characters to a 

 view which bears an odd resemblance to that of the older natural- 

 ists ; for, according to him, the principle of stability which results 

 in the permanency of types is quite independent of selection. 



He shows, for example, by the statistical study of stature, 

 that the type of human stature is very constant from generation 

 to generation, although the statistics of marriage show that there 

 is no controlling tendency for persons of like stature to marry. 

 He also shows that the children of parents who are both tall or 

 both short do not on the average have the stature of their parents, 

 but are nearer than they to the mean for the race. These facts, 

 and others like them, are held to prove the existence of a principle 

 of stability independent of selection. 



In his more recent work on the patterns at the tips of human 

 fingers, he says that since it has been shown (chapter xii) that 

 the character of the finger prints is practically identical in Eng- 

 lishmen, Welshmen, Jews, negroes, and Basques, the same familiar 

 patterns appearing in all of them with much the same degree of 

 frequency, and that persons belonging to different classes, such as 

 students in science and students in art, farm laborers, men of cul- 

 ture, and the lowest idiots in the London district, show no decided 

 difference in their finger prints, it seems to be proved that no 

 sensible amount of correlation exists between any of the patterns 

 on the one hand and any of the bodily faculties or characteristics 

 on the other. It seems absurd, therefore, to hold that, in the 

 struggle for existence, a person with, say, a loop on his right 

 middle finger has a better chance of survival or a better chance 

 of early marriage than one with an arch. Consequently, genera 

 and species are here seen to be formed without the slightest aid 

 from either natural or sexual selection, and these finger patterns 

 are apparently the only peculiarity in which panmyxia, or the 

 effect of promiscuous marriage, admits of being studied on a 

 large scale. 



He says that results of panmyxia in finger-markings cor- 

 roborate his arguments in Natural Inheritance and elsewhere 

 to show that " organic stability " is the primary factor by which 



