HEREDITY. 



(Read before the Cincinnati Natural History Society, March 5,1889. 



Inheritance signifies the transmission of peculiari- 

 ties, properties or qualities, from parent to progeny, or 

 the descent of ancestral features to posterity. In the 

 bequest, both paternal and maternal instincts are 

 transmitted. Inasmuch as the son takes the name of 

 his father the family cognomen the popular impres- 

 sion is that paternal impressions are the stronger, and 

 therefore likely to dominate, or to be leading, swerv- 

 ingly influential. In this there is a chance to perpetu- 

 ate a mistake. A child is not the descendant of the 

 father or the mother, but of the two combined or 

 commingled, there being a compromise and not an in- 

 dividual feature from either parent. Furthermore, 

 there may not be an equable division of parental 

 qualities, but the child shall inherit unequally, as it 

 were, partaking physically of the father, and mentally 

 of the mother, or vice versa, yet closely resembling 

 neither in any peculiarity. Besides, heredity does not 

 necessarily mean the direct transmission of parental 

 qualities, but refers to more or less remote ancestral 

 forms which are inclined to crop out and assert them- 

 selves upon the first favorable opportunity. 



The fact that a child can not possibly follow 

 either father or mother establishes the necessity for 

 variation, which is opposed to heredity in a restricted 

 sense. Although there may be a proud satisfaction in 

 the thought that children are to be like their parents, 



(120) 



