CHAPTER II. 



PROCESSES IN HEREDITY. 



Natural and Acquired Peculiarities. — Transmutation of Female into Male 

 Measures. — Particulate Inheritance. — Family Likeness and Individual 

 Variation. — Latent Characteristics. — Heritages that Blend and those 

 that are Mutually Exclusive. — Inheritance of Acquired Faculties. — 

 Variety of Petty Influences. 



A concise account of the chief processes in heredity 

 will be given in this chapter, partly to serve as a 

 reminder to those to whom the works of Darwin especi- 

 ally, and of other writers on the subject, are not 

 familiar, but principally for the sake of presenting them 

 under an aspect that best justifies the methods of 

 investigation about to be employed. 



Natural and Acquired Peculiarities. — The peculiari- 

 ties of men may be roughly sorted into those that 

 are natural and those that are acquired. It is of the 

 former that I am about to speak in this book. They 

 are noticeable in every direction, but are nowhere so 

 remarkable as in those twins 1 who have been dissimilar 



1 See Human Faculty, 237. 



