170 BLASTOGENIC VARIATIONS. 



and unequal amounts of the different characters from 

 their parents, to these either partially or entirely refus- 

 ing to blend, but also to some of the characters received 

 remaining latent, or to characters latent in the parents 

 revealing themselves in the offspring. 



Sports. Instances of so-called sports, or suddenly 

 occurring aberrant variations, have been given in the 

 second chapter, but nothing was said of their origin. To 

 what are we to attribute this ? Are they to be regarded 

 as normal, only somewhat exaggerated, variations, or 

 are they something essentially different? The more 

 general opinion probably inclines to the latter view, as 

 there are several facts which it is difficult to reconcile 

 with the former. It is said, for instance, that sports, 

 as distinguished from varieties, are much more stable; 

 that they may be transmitted to successive generations 

 with considerable persistence and in undiminished 

 strength. Galton has suggested * that whilst organ- 

 isms showing ordinary variations are grouped round one 

 " position of organic stability," towards which the off- 

 spring in the next generation tend to regress, sports are 

 centred round a different position of stability, and are 

 not merely a strained modification of the original type. 

 They therefore have little tendency to revert to Ais 

 original type, but are capable of propagating their 

 freshly acquired characters more or less undiminished, 

 and so giving rise to fresh races. Galton considers that 

 the results which he has obtained in his detailed study 

 of human finger-prints f afford strong evidence in sup- 

 port of his view. These patterns, formed by the papil- 



* Vide "Natural Inheritance," p. 30; also "Mind," p. 362, 1894. 

 fPhil. Trans. 1891, B. 



