Organic Inheritance 15 



cliaraciters always 'retain their individuality 

 and when they are different and exclusive, the 

 more active character is said to be dominant 

 and the more passive one recessive. Mendel 

 believed that paired characters received from 

 the parents are so segregated in the ovum and 

 sperm cell of the offspring that only one of the 

 characters is contained in each of these germ 

 cells. Thus when there are two contrasted 

 pairs of characters in the parent only one 

 (dominant) will appear in the offspring. These 

 distinct characters are called pure, and the es- 

 sential fact of Mendel's law is that the char- 

 acters in the germ cells always retain their 

 purity or distinctiveness. In the offspring of 

 hybrids 25 per cent, of dominant and recessive 

 characters will reappear as pure. It is gen- 

 erally found that the characters, dominant and 

 recessive, transmitted by hybrids will be split 

 in a general ratio of three to one. 



Professor Edwin Grant Conklin * defines he- 

 redity as the particular germinal organization 

 that is transmitted from parents to offspring. 



1 Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men. — 

 Princeton University Press. 



