An Introduction to a Biology 



both of the mice and of the peas. I am now investigating 

 the properties of the various kinds of individuals in various 

 generations in both cases, accumulating information (of a 

 physiological nature) which will be available to the bio- 

 metrician for use in testing the Law of Ancestral Inheritance. 



(e) WHY DO WHITE SHEEP EAT MORE THAN BLACK 

 ONES? 



I was asked the other day this well-known riddle, and 

 as I had forgotten the answer I was told it : " Because 

 there are more of them." 



The supplying of the answer never provokes a laugh, 

 yet the relation between it and the question is full of interest. 

 Let us discuss it. When you ask the riddle you do not say 

 that you are not referring to individual white and black 

 sheep, but the man of whom the riddle is asked invariably 

 thinks that you are. In attempting to answer it, the ideas 

 that rush through his mind may either take the form of 

 seeking for some pun on the words, or perhaps for some 

 humorous quotation in which they appear ; and so forth : 

 or, as usually happens, he thinks that, as a matter of 

 fact, a white individual does eat more than a black, and 

 (if he is a biologist) he may be trying to think of some physio- 

 logical explanation of the fact, in connection possibly with 

 the well-established relation between pigmentation and 

 the getting rid of waste products. 



In the answer he is told that the amount eaten by the 

 sum-total of white sheep as compared with that eaten by 

 the sum-total of black sheep is the subject under discussion ; 

 and not any peculiarities of ingestion, digestion, or egestion 

 associated with whiteness as compared with blackness. 



If the antithesis between truths about masses and truths 

 about individuals which constitutes the point in this riddle 

 were more widely and more clearly perceived than it is to-day, 

 there would no longer be that confusion in the minds of 

 most biologists which prevents them seeing the profound 



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