162 H, H. NEWMAN 



sembles the father, while fetus IV, with 566 is almost exactly a 

 blend between 574 and 559. Careful examination shows that the 

 scute complex of the two sides are not equal, but that the right 

 side is like that of the mother and the left side like the father. 

 That there is a real intra-individual segregation of the tendencies 

 of the two parents, following the line of bilateral symmetry will 

 be conclusively shown in a future paper in connection with the 

 inheritance of atypical peculiarities. 



Set C 73 is a case in which only one of the four fetuses resembles 

 the mother, while three of them probably fluctuate about the 

 number of the father. The mother has 544 scutes and the fetuses, 

 respectively, 555, 553, 551, 544. The father had presumably about' 

 553 scutes. Other cases of this type are seen in sets C 79, K 77, 

 K 89, and so forth. 



Then, finally there are not a few cases where the individuals of 

 a set differ considerably but none of them resemble the mother. 

 For example let us consider set K 57. The mother has 552 scutes 

 and the offspring, respectively, 536, 533, 540, 540. If we suppose for 

 the sake of discussion that 533 or thereabouts represents the scute 

 number of the father 544 would be an exact blend between the num- 

 bers of the two parents. The number 540 may be considered as an 

 approximation of such a blend. It is highly probable that this 

 apparent blending is due to a bilateral segregation of maternal and 

 paternal tendencies so that in each of the fetuses III and IV one- 

 half resembles one parent and the other half the other. I am un- 

 able to make myself fully clear by the use of the present material 

 that there does exist a pronounced tendency for such a bilateral 

 segregation of parental characters, but trust that I shall be able 

 to offer convincing evidence of its reality in connection with the 

 inheritance and distribution of double and split bands and scutes. 



I am convinced, after much study of the data, that these large 

 aggregates of meristic variates are inherited, as are many sub- 

 stantival characters, according to the laws of alternative inherit- 

 ance. There are so many evidences of practically complete dom- 

 inance of one or the other parent and so little evidence of any true 

 blending that I am inclined to believe that, except in so far as 

 some regions may be dominated by the maternal tendency and 

 others by the paternal, there is no such phenomenon as blending. 



