SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY 197 



Now this is a remarkable statement, and it should not for one 

 moment be supposed that any Mendelian ever uttered it. We 

 should certainly be interested to hear the name of the authority 

 and the chapter and verse of the book where such an expected 

 progeny from such a mating is stated to be a Mendelian prediction. 



The moment is perhaps opportune for a brief statement 

 of the real facts of the subject. Now one of the most significant 

 of these facts is that no Mendelian has ever made any prediction 

 as to the nature of the expected oflfspring between mulattoes 

 bred inter se, or between mulattoes and quadroons, or indeed 

 between any of the crosses that are possible between European- 

 negro hybrids. These alleged statements have been imputed to 

 Mendelians either by those who imagine such predictions are 

 orthodox, or by those who have got into a hopeless confusion 

 as to the real nature of " intermediates " or grades of characters. 

 It is unfortunate, as Mr. R. P. Gregory has pointed out in a reply 

 to the article, that people do exist who are sometimes too ready 

 to make unwarranted assumptions, which are then attributed 

 to Mendelians. If the public desires to know Mendelism, it should 

 of course, itself pass through the plains of Cirrha and climb the 

 hills of Citha^ron, and accept it from the Mendelian Apollo alone. 



The Mendelian attitude in the matter of European-negro 

 hybrids is the same as that in all other questions of genetics. 

 It is, in effect, that we must first ascertain by breeding experi- 

 ments the nature and number of the primary gametic factors 

 which are concerned before we can make any prediction at all. 

 In this particular case the Mendelian requires first to carefully 

 ascertain the gametic factors which determine the blackness of 

 the negro's sldn and those which operate to produce the European 

 colour of skin. We need not pursue the question in detail here, 

 because we have already considered it (supra p. 163) in commenting 

 upon Professor Karl Pearson's contribution to " Biometrika." 



But we desire to pass one more comment upon the remarkable 

 statement of the problem as it is given in the article we are con- ' 

 sidering. To a Mendelian the error of the statement is of course 

 obvious at once. Assuming that Mendelian principles are operat- 

 ing in negro crosses with Europeans, and further assuming that the 

 negro blackness is an elementary character, not resolvable into 

 a series of factors, and that European " whiteness " is simply an 

 elementary absence of negro colour, it is even then erroneous 

 to say that we should expect " the progeny of every negro married 

 to a white woman would be in definite proportions pure white, 

 pure black, and mulattoes." For, as Mrs. Haig Thomas pointed 

 out in a letter to the paper in which this article was published, 

 the first generation cannot manifest the segregation of characters 

 which occurs in the invisible gametes of that generation. It is not 



