VARIATION AND HEREDITY 17 



mately prevail, it seems certain that such transmissions 

 must play a part in evolution small compared with that 

 due to the selection of those innate variations which are 

 readily hereditable. Inborn qualities are immeasurably 

 more useful to the race than those induced or developed 

 by environment, though to the individual, who has 

 received his allotted share of qualities, the favourable 

 opportunity for developing them is still of the utmost 

 importance. But the power of handing them on, used 

 or unused by the individual, is the true safeguard of 

 the moral and spiritual grandeur of a nation — 



All I could never be 

 All men ignored in me 

 This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 



While Darwin was developing his theory of the 

 method of evolution, Gregor Mendel, Abbot of BrUnn, 

 was making experiments on the hereditary transmission 

 of definite qualities in peas, and had invented a means 

 of quantitative research which, rediscovered in later 

 days, has modified our conceptions of inheritance. 



It was recognized, as for example by Galton, that 

 two modes of inheritance were known. The offspring 

 might acquire from its two parents a certain quality in 

 blended amount, as Mulattos are intermediate in com- 

 plexion between their Negro and European forebears ; 

 or, on the other hand, the offspring might resemble 

 one or other parent exclusively, as the children of a 

 man and a woman are either boys or girls but no 

 intermediate variety. 



The latter mode of inheritance was found by Mendel 



c 



