The 



Mendel Journal 



No. 3 September, 1912 



ALTERNATIVE HEREDITY OE MENTAL 

 TRAITS. 



BY 



FREDERICK ADAMS WOODS, M.D., 



Lecturer in the Biological Department of the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology; late Instructor in Histology and 

 Embryology in the Harvard Medical School, Boston, U.S.A. 



The sharp contrasts in traits of character between 

 children born of the same parentage and educated 

 under the same surroundings is often a matter of 

 wonderment, and such variations in the human strip, 

 reckless as they at first sight seem in their wide 

 individualistic expressions, have often deterred belief 

 in the value of heredity. The real lesson is quite the 

 reverse, and these same contrasts, when rightly 

 understood, form, perhaps, the strongest argument 

 in favour of mental inheritance. They support the 

 belief in the essentially predetermined nature of such 

 differences as commonly exist between man and man, 

 and bring the whole question of family and individual 

 vicissitudes within the scope and understanding of 

 the germ-cell theory. 



Alternative heredity is exemplified when any two 

 contrasted qualities are present in a stock, either as 

 outward body manifestations or as inward germ-cell 

 determinants, and these qualities are passed onward 

 from generation to generation without neutralising 

 each other, or, in other words, without mutually 



