398 



Mr. F. Gallon on Blood-relationship. 



[June 13, 



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gent, and the composition of the army will be sensibly 

 the same as if it had been due to a system of im- 

 mediate representation from the several villages. 



The diagram (fig. 1) expresses the whole of the 

 foregoing results ; it begins with the structureless 

 elements whence the parent individual was formed, 

 and ends with his contributions to the structureless 

 elements whence his offspring is formed. 



I will now inquire what are, roughly speaking, the 

 relative proportions of the contributions to the ele- 

 ments of the offspring made respectively by the 

 patent and latent elements of the adult parent. It is 

 better not to complicate the inquiry by speaking, at 

 first, of these elements in their entirety, but rather of 

 some special characteristic : thus, to fix the ideas, 

 suppose we are speaking about a peculiar skin-mark 

 in an animal ; the peculiarity in question may be 

 conceived (1) as purety personal, without the con- 

 currence of any latent equivalents, (2) as personal 

 but conjoined with latent equivalents, and (3) as ex- 

 istent wholly in a latent form. It can be shown that, 

 in the first case, the power of hereditary transmission 

 is exceedingly feeble ; for, notwithstanding some ex- 

 ceptions (as in the lost power of flight in domestic 

 birds), the effects of the use and disuse of limbs, and 

 those of habit, are transmitted to posterity in only a 

 very slight degree. Again, it can be fairly argued 

 that many instances which seem at first sight to fall 

 under case (1), that is, to be purely personal, and to 

 prove a larger hereditary influence than what I assign 

 to it, do really belong to case (2) : thus, when indi- 

 viduals born with a peculiar mark are reputed to be 

 the first of their race in whom it had ever appeared, 

 it would be hazardous in the extreme to argue that 

 the latent elements of that mark were wholly deficient 

 in them. It is very remarkable (I was indebted for a 

 knowledge of this fact to Mr. Tegetmeier) how nearly 

 every bar or spot found in any species of an animal 

 in its wild state may be bred into existence in the 

 domesticated variety of that species, showing that the 

 elements of all these bars and spots are universally 

 present in all varieties of the species, though their 

 manifestation may be overborne and suppressed. We 

 therefore see that the hereditary influences of an 



