234 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



possible to weigh several estimates of a particular royal personage, 

 and, to obtain a kind of mean result. For practical purposes 

 such an average judgement will doubtless approximate very nearly 

 to the truth. Certainly it is as near to the truth as we can possibly 

 get. By thus endeavouring to weigh the intellectual, moral, 

 and physical worth of the kings, queens, princes, and princesses 

 whose characters Dr. Adams Wood has attempted to investigate, 

 he has eliminated from his enquiry that most disturbing of all 

 factors — the personal equation. By standardising, as it were, 

 the average judgements thus obtained, it is possible to trace the 

 hereditary descent not only of definite types of intellectual, 

 moral, and physical traits, but also within a margin of error, of 

 the different degrees of their developement. Dr. Adams Wood's 

 method of ascertaining facts and arriving at conclusions, 

 are such that " the basis of his book is placed in the hands of his 

 readers, so that anyone doubting the truth of his assertions can 

 easily take a few characters at random and look them up." We 

 have so looked up his estimations of the chief Portuguese royal 

 personages which are described in the three pedigrees on pages 209, 

 210, and 213, and, on the whole, we endorse the values which 

 the author has assigned to them. They represent, we think, 

 very fairly the general verdict of History. 



Now, how far do these three pedigrees justify us in believing that 

 intellectual and moral quahties are transmitted by inheritance 

 with the same degree of inevitableness and inexorableness as the 

 physical characters ? We think they fully justify such a belief. 

 If we start with Alfonso I., the founder of the Kingdom of Portugal, 

 we shall notice that while his father, Henry of Burgundy, is valued 

 highly in the scale of morahty, his mother Theresa, though a very 

 able and accomphshed woman, had a bad character, and was violent 

 and passionate. Her low grade of moral character is indicated 

 in the pedigree by the symbol X. We can trace this symbol 

 throughout all the three pedigrees, marking in a symbohc way the 

 relentless operations of inheritance, and justifying the old adage 

 " That what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh." But 

 what is yet more important, since it shows that neither sex nor 

 environment are answerable for moral character, is the fact that 

 this symbol sometimes attaches to a woman's name and some- 

 times to a man's. Moreover, it may indicate a particular brother 

 or sister, while the others are not so stigmatised. Yet they have 

 been reared under the same influences. Coming back, then, to 

 Alphonso I., we find him of decidedly higher morality than his 

 mother but not so high as his father. In neither of his 

 three children does his mother's low degree of morahty appear. 

 He married Matilda, of whom httle is known. It may be taken 

 that her moral nature was not notorious or some record would 



