PARTICULATE INHERITANCE 115 



(6) In regard to his ancestry, Huxley wrote to Havelock Ellis * as 

 follows : " We are mainly Iberian mongrels, with a good dash of 

 Norman and a little Saxon. . . . My father was a Warwickshire 

 man ; my mother came of Wiltshire people. Except for being 

 somewhat taller than the average of the type, she was a typical 

 example of the ' Iberian ' variety — dark, thin, rapid in all her ways, 

 and with the most piercing black eyes I have ever seen in anybody's 

 head. Mentally and physically (except in the matter of the beautiful 

 eyes) I am a piece of my mother, and, except for my stature, which 

 used to be 5 ft. 10 in., I should do very well for a 'black Celt' — 

 supposed to be the worst variety of that type. My father was 

 fresh-coloured and grey-eyed, though dark-haired ; good-humoured, 

 though of a quick temper ; a kindly man, rather too easy-going 

 for this wicked world. There is a vein of him in me, but the 

 constituents have never mixed properly." In this case, it may 

 be fairly said that the mother was markedly prepotent. 



(c) Herbert Spencer did not think that he took after his mother 

 except in some physical features. " Whatever specialities of char- 

 acter and faculty in me are due to inheritance, are inherited from, 

 my father. Between my mother's mind and my own I see scarcely 

 any resemblances, emotional or intellectual." He inherited his 

 father's nervous weakness, but his " visceral constitution was 

 maternal rather than paternal." f 



§ 5. Partictilate Inheritance 



In many cases it may be seen that the peculiarities of the two 

 parents do not blend, but are separately expressed in different 

 parts of the same organ or system. The combination is, as it 

 were, too coarse-grained to be called a mixture or a blend. This 

 is termed particulate inheritance. 1 



A familiar instance is a piebald foal — the progeny of a dark- 

 coloured sire and a light-coloured mare. The paternal hair is 

 seen in some parts, the maternal hair in other parts. " Eye- 

 colour is generally exclusive, but we get one or two cases per 



* Havelock Ellis, " Huxley's Ancestry," letter to Nature, Ixiii. (Dec. 6, 

 1900), p. 127. 



t Autobiography, 1904, vol. i. 



