136 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 
similarity between parent and son is brought about?’ The existence 
of a form Triton Blasii, which is a cross between 7. marmoratus and T. 
cristatus, is undoubtedly interesting, but it is an anomaly. I want to 
know how it is that the offspring of the crested newt is like its parent. 
And this you can’t tell me. I want to know about normal heredity ; 
you give me nothing but information about abnormal. I ask for bread, 
and you give me what is to me a stone; interesting and curious, but 
still a stone.” 
I should answer objections of this kind by asking, ‘But why 
abnormal?’’ Why should we regard the disintegration of biological 
units as more “abnormal”’ than that of chemical ones? It is only by 
experiment with “abnormal’’ phenomena that the chemist has pro- 
gressed. If he had stuck as rigidly to the observation of “ normal’’ water 
as those who bring this objection against the hybridiser would have him 
do, he would know as little about the chemistry of water as the biologist 
did about heredity before he began to experiment with it. 
But this answer, though it sounds plausible enough at first hearing, 
can only be thoroughly satisfactory to those who urge this objection if 
we can show them that the appearance of abnormality is merely due to the 
fact that we are dealing with normal units in an “abnormal” condition 
(the result of disturbance by cross-breeding), and if we can show them 
that we really are not dealing with an abnormal hereditary phenomenon. 
Now what are we to understand by abnormal? The most definite 
formulation of what is meant by abnormality in heredity is that of 
Dr. Archdall Reid. According to him alternative inheritance has been 
evolved as a means of keeping the sexes separate, or, to put it in a 
teleological way, of ensuring that an individual shall be either a male 
or a female. When the alternative mode of inheritance first became 
differentiated it was only sex which was inherited in this way. But just 
as sex, so te speak, sometimes makes a mistake, and trespasses on forms 
of heredity which do not belong to it, and blends in inheritance, with 
the result that a hermaphrodite is produced, so sometimes not-sexual 
characters, albinism for example, trespass on the mode of inheritance 
reserved for sex and are inherited alternatively. Mendelians, says 
Dr. Reid, have lately suggested that the inheritance of sexual characters 
may be Mendelian. We shall be much nearer the truth, he thinks, if 
we say that the inheritance of Mendelian characters is sexual. 
There is undoubtedly a parallel between the manner in which 
Mendelian and that in which sexual characters are inherited. The 
Mendelian view is that Mendel’s work has provided us with conceptions 
which will enable us to account for the mass of hereditary phenomena ; 
the latest extension of the method being an attempt to account for the 
phenomena of the inheritance even of sex by it. Dr. Reid’s view is that 
Mendelian phenomena are merely anomalies which are the result of the 
accidental association of certain varietal characters with a mode of inherit- 
ance primarily evolved to ensure bisexuality. This view may or may not 
be right ; but it deserves careful consideration because one of the most 
deep-rooted weaknesses of the mind is the tendency to regard that with 
which we have been acquainted for the longest time as the starting-point 
from which we must proceed to other things. For example, the most 
