70 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



shall be and do, separate from each other during 

 the processes and structural changes by which the 

 sex-cells are produced, so that, individually, we 

 represent the product of a sum of paired characters 

 handed down to us by our parents ? And what we 

 shall be, therefore, will depend not upon what our 

 ancestors as an aggregate were, but upon the gametic 

 nature and structure of our parents ? And since our 

 parents can only carry between them a single pair of 

 alternative characters of the same class, while all our 

 ancestors between them may have carried many 

 such pairs, it is clear that we individually cannot 

 represent in any particular character more than two 

 of our ancestors, while in some cases we may represent 

 only one and carry in a recessive condition the 

 alternative unit character of one other ? Or, are we 

 the product of the blending of all the ancestral alterna- 

 tive qualities that have been brought into our line by 

 all our ancestors ? So far as our evidence is definite 

 at all, the answer for the latter question is negative, 

 and afiSjmative for the former. I am far from 

 asserting that our evidence is complete, or that 

 it is of such a nature that the blended hypothesis of 

 inheritance is yet altogether excluded. But I am 

 prepared to maintain that, making due allowances 

 for the circumstances under which the human 

 pedigrees have been obtained, and giving proper 

 consideration to the probable complexity of many 

 human characters supposed to be simple, the evidence 

 is very clearly suggestive — and in some cases it 

 amounts to a scientific demonstration — that gametic 



