100 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



CONCLUSION. 



It is now clear that we have discovered three important lawG 

 which apply, if not to all hereditary characters, at least to prac- 

 tically all which have been studied. First, we have the law of dom- 

 inance, the one of the three laws which is most limited in its ap- 

 plication. According to it when two naturally opposite characters 

 meet, one of them shows and the other does not. Second, we have 

 the law of segregation of character pairs, according to which an 

 individual transmits to half of its progeny a particular character 

 received from one parent, and to the other half the corresponding 

 form of this character received from the other parent. Third, we 

 have the law of recombination, which is the most important of all. 

 According to this law the grandchildren of two individuals, if suf- 

 ficiently numerous, present every possible recombination of the 

 characters of these individuals. 



We do not yet know all of the characters in any species that 

 obey the above laws. One of the important tasks of the breeder at 

 the present time is to ascertain what these characters are ; that is, 

 to find those characters which pass from one generation to another 

 v/ithout going to pieces. When this has been done, we shall have 

 placed in our hands the power of creating many new and valuable 

 forms. 



We have seen that these laws apply to the physical character- 

 istics of man. Let us also see whether they apply to intellectual 

 and moral characters. Fortunately, we are not without evidence 

 on this point. Dr. Frederick Adams Woods of Connecticut has 

 devoted many years of patient study to an investigation of this 

 question, which has recently been published under the title "Hered- 

 ity in Royalty." He chose the royal families of Europe for this 

 study for two reasons ; in the first place, the ancestry of royal per- 

 sonages is carefully recorded; furthermore, enough written record 

 has been left concerning the individuals to enable us to form a sat- 

 isfactory estimate of their intellectual ability, and of their moral 

 character. After long and patient study, Dr. Woods was able to 

 grade some 800 of these personages, either for intellectual or moral 

 character or both, thus giving a basis for comparing intellectual 

 ability and moral character of parent and offspring. This second 

 reason for choosing royal families for this study lies in the fact 

 that environmental influences may be assumed to be more uniform 

 amongst these people than amongst any other class. 



Now for the results. He finds plenty of evidence, though Dr. 



