Hamilton: Albinism in Man 



491 



not yet demonstrated for human albin- 

 ism, but who shall determine what is 

 'normal' stock, when over and over 

 again the albino appears in the mating 

 of two stocks which have no record of 

 previous albinism? Let us rather adopt 

 the tone of the sooth-sayer in Antony 

 and Cleopatra and when we are asked 

 'Is't you. Sir, that know things?' reply 

 modestly, ' In Nature's infinite book of 

 secrecy a little can we read. ' We await 

 the gradual building up of more com- 

 plete knowledge." 



In perusing this truly admirable piece 

 of hard and conscientious work, despite 

 the manifest desire of the authors to 

 square the facts gathered with the under- 

 lying principles that may be found to 

 govern the appearance of the facts, 

 there comes irresistibly to mind Mrs. 

 John Martin's likening of scientists to 

 sick widow's children who keep gather- 

 ing nuts which nobody at home can 



crack and ]3ointing to the nuts as wealth. 

 The authors of this monograph, have 

 gathered an invaluable store of inter- 

 esting facts and their desire is to relate 

 these facts to the problem of heredity, 

 but whether we must wait until the 

 microscope has told us all it knows of 

 human hair, and eye, and skin before we 

 may conclude, from the symboled pedi- 

 grees that are coming to hand in greater 

 and greater numbers, that albinism be- 

 haves recessively or no, is an open 

 question. With the greatest respect for 

 the scientific labors of our three authors 

 and their generous collaborators in the 

 field of detail and correlation, it would 

 still appear that, in so far as the strictly 

 hereditary and social aspects of albin- 

 ism are concerned, this monumental 

 work is indeed, as the authors have been 

 the first to see it, but a small beginning 

 and initial stimulus for further re- 

 search. 



Heredity and Environment 



The correctness of statistical measurements of the relative force of heredity and 

 environment is vigorously defended by Karl Pearson in Biometrika (X, 1, April, 

 1914), in answer to recent writers in the Eugenics Review who have declared such 

 measures to be fallacious. Pearson repHes that his critics question the accuracy 

 of the statistical method because they do not really understand what a coefficient 

 of correlation is, nor what mutiple correlation means. His own well-known po.si- 

 tion is that heredity is at least five or ten times as important as environment, in 

 the individual ; he proceeds to show that this is really a conservative estimate, and 

 that even in the most extreme case supposable, the influence of heredity would 

 still be preponderant. He assumes that there is an infinity of environmental fac- 

 tors which have the same correlation as a parent with the child, and that there is 

 assortative mating of the child's parents; even in such a case it is only necessary 

 to take the grandparents into account to show that "together grandparents and 

 parents would influence a man's character more than an infinity of environmental 

 factors of the same grade of correlation, because the latter factors are far more 

 highly correlated together than several of our relatives." 



Eugenic Progress 



A period seems to come in the religious development of nearly every civilized 

 community when the moral conscience is awakened to its responsibility for the 

 weaker and less competent stocks, who, inheritors of the racial faults and faiHngs, 

 are true scapegoats by which the progress of the race is assured to others. If, 

 however, the effect of this altruistic movement in directing the attention of so- 

 ciety to the condition of the unsuccessful and unhealthy be to discourage and ham- 

 per "the families of the able and robust, no further racial progress is possible, and 

 degeneration will set in.— W. C. D. and C. D. Whetham: Heredity and Society. 



