$1000 FOR DATA ON HEREDITY 
OST students of heredity today 
M believe that the results of use 
and disuse are not inherited; 
that work done by the parent 
will not affect the inborn character of 
the offspring; in short, that “acquired 
characters’’ are not transmitted. 
C. L. Redfield, a Chicago engineer, 
holds the opposite view. So strongly 
does he believe that the general opinion 
of biologists on this point is incorrect 
that he has offered the American 
Genetic Association $1,000 for evidence 
on the subject. This is to cover data on 
five points. 
1. He will pay $200 for evidence that 
any one of the two or three thousand 
intellectually great men or women of 
history is the product of an ancestry 
which represents, on the average, four 
generations to a century. 
2. He will pay $200 for evidence that 
any one of the two or three hundred 
intellectually very great men or women 
of history is the product of an ancestry 
which represents, on the average, three 
generations to a century. 
3. He will pay $200 for a case from 
livestock breeding, where the parents 
made acquirements below the standard, 
in respect to performance, and the off- 
spring surpassed the parents. 
4. He will pay $200 for a case where 
a decline in powers of the offspring 
failed to follow acquirements, in the 
parents, which were clearly and dis- 
tinctly below the standard of perform- 
ance of the breed. 
5. He will pay $200 if it can be shown 
for any group ‘of animals that the 
amount of improvement or decline in 
animal powers was not, as nearly as 
can be determined by actual measure- 
ments, exactly proportional to the 
amount of acquirement by ancestors 
above or below the normal or standard. 
The last three items require full pedi- 
grees for three generations with measure- 
ments applied, with a fair degree of 
accuracy, to each parent in the pedigree. 
Mr. Redfield’s publications give nu- 
66 
merous examples of how measurements 
are made and applied to three gene- 
rations of ancestors. The comparison 
is to be between the final product and 
the ancestors three generations pre- 
viously. 
Approved securities to the amount of 
$1,000 have been deposited by Mr. 
Redfield with the treasurer of this Asso- 
ciation. 
The first two items enumerated above 
are extensions of a proposal which Mr. 
Redfield has been making through this 
association for nearly two years. The 
result of the first year of the offer were 
stated in the JouRNAL oF HEREDITY 
for February, 1915 (Vol. VI, p. 92); 
half a dozen pedigrees were sent in, but 
none of them met the requirements. 
TWO PEDIGREES SUBMITTED 
During the past year only two pedi- 
grees of interest have been sent in. 
Marshall Nevers, of 113 Columbia 
Heights, Brooklyn, N. Y., has pointed 
out that the ancestry of William the 
Conqueror covers about 100 years in 
three generations, while Dr. Heinrich 
C. Keidel, instructor in the German 
department of Ohio State University, 
has submitted the pedigree of Frederick 
the Great, showing that he, too, comes 
in the three-generations-to-a-century 
class. 
It appears that the council of this 
association must undertake the some- 
what unpleasant task of declaring 
whether or not, in its opinion, the intel- 
lectual greatness of either William or 
Frederick is sufficient to entitle him 
to a place among the two or three 
hundred intellectually most eminent 
men and women of history. At Mr. 
Redfield’s suggestion, the consideration 
of this point is postponed and these two 
contributions will be submitted under 
the new and larger offer, to be decided 
upon at the end of the present year. 
In the meantime, it is the hope of the 
council that genealogists may be able 
to uncover other great men who are the 
