84 Life and Death, Heredity and Evolution 



ber of hereditarily diverse families or races, whose charac- 

 teristics show a high degree of permanence from generation 

 to generation. The offspring inherit in a high degree the 

 characteristics of the parent. But this inheritance is not 

 through an actual handing on of the parent's characteris- 

 tics ; on the contrary the offspring have to produce anew 

 the same kind of characters that the parent had. For this 

 reason any peculiarities acquired by the parent during its 

 life time are not inherited. 



Inheritance is very exact, but when we study a family for 

 many generations, we find that it is not absolutely precise, 

 for minute hereditary variations gradually appear, and the 

 single race separates into many hereditarily diverse races. 

 The process of evolution becomes visible. 



