DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION 157 



treated, thus eliminating the matter of sex, and all the "chil- 

 dren," ^ whether male or female, are thus considered as males. 

 The rest of the table is self-explanatory. The heights of mid- 

 parents are classified to half inches and recorded in the column 

 at the left. The height of each adult " child " is recorded in its 

 proper column and in a row opposite the height of his mid- 

 parent, after which totals are added both ways. 



Thus we see that of the whole 928 people whose stature was 

 taken, 120 were 68.3 inches high (see column 9). Of these, 

 I was born from 7 2. 5 -inch parents ; 3 were born from 7 1.5 -inch 

 parents ; 12 were born from 70. 5 -inch parents, and so on from 

 the shorter parentage. In all there were 928 children and 205 

 pairs of parents, — of course duplicated in the case of brothers. 



We are now ready to look a little further into the meaning of 

 this table. 



The offspring not like the parent. The very first fact that 

 attracts our attention in this table is that the offspring are not 

 much like their immediate parents, but that all sorts of parents 

 (short, medium, or tall) produce all sorts of children (short, 

 medium, or tall), and that the correspondence in height be- 

 tween specific parents and their particular offspring is not very 

 close. In other words, like offspring may be produced by very 

 dissimilar parents (see any column of the table) ; and, corre- 

 spondingly, like parents, or even the same parents, in succes- 

 sive generations, may produce very dissimilar offspring (see any 

 row in the table, as, for example, the very variable offspring of 

 68. 5 -inch midparents). This important fact lies at the basis of 

 all breeding, as it does of most sociological questions, involving 

 parentage. 



Mediocrity the common lot, whatever the parentage ; re- 

 gression. Looked at closely, mediocrity seems to be the com- 

 mon lot. The average height of the people in this table is 



1 The student must remember that in this case the word " children " is used 

 to mean simply offspring in general. These children were fully grown, and 

 their heights are strictly comparable with those of their parents. 



