246 On InheritmicG of Coat-Colour in the Greyhound 
offspring, over 7000 cases of grandparent and offspring, and over 24,000 cases of 
siblings. Nothing approaching such totals could be obtained by experiment ad 
hoc. Further, the colour pedigrees for a number of generations were directly 
available. Against these advantages is to be put in the foremost place the 
primary value of exactitude and uniformity in record such as might be obtained 
in a well organised scientific experiment. This counts for a great deal, but it 
does not count for everything with those who realise what are the probable 
errors of small series, and how inconclusive such series usually are*. On the 
other hand also, if we admit the want of scientific exactness and the play of 
individual judgment in the character classifications of breeders, we have still 
to remember that when the breeding of a particular species has been long 
established a conventional scale also grows up which, owing to the contact of 
breeder with breeder at sales and shows, and further to the regulations of societies, 
and judges, becomes within broad lines universally recognised and appreciated. 
Hence, while we fully recognise all the disadvantages of stud-book records, we 
still hold that highly valuable work may be done in the field of inheritance by 
accepting the classification of professional, if non-scientific breeders. 
So far as we are aware no series of dogs has been dealt with or at least any 
results for such a series published since Mr Francis Galton's work on Basset 
Houndsf. We have long felt that that work needed supplementing, partly 
because it dealt with a rather small group of much inbred hounds, and partly 
because, especially in the matter of paternal inheritance, it presented irregularities, 
which even raised a suspicion of the goodness of the record J. The greyhound 
naturally occurred to us as a dog of old standing bred for a purpose — speed — 
which was not closely and obviously associated with its coat-colour. We were, 
however, warned that breeders for coursing did fancy certain colours, and 
we found that the record as presented by the greyhound stud-books was very 
incomplete, i.e. a very small proportion of the members of any litter were ever 
recorded in these volumes. Hence, if selection for record took place largely by 
colour, we might be misled by the greyhound stud-book in a manner impossible 
in the case of the stud-book for thoroughbred race-horses. An examination of 
other dog records left on our minds the same doubt as to possible colour-selection 
in other cases, and thus, although the inheritance of coat-colour in dogs had been 
proposed for treatment at the same time as the race-horses were dealt with in 
1899§, we had felt bound to leave it untouched. Meanwhile Mr Howard Collins 
of Edgebaston had also been occupied with the same problem, and troubled with 
the same doubt. He surmounted the difficulty, however, by the issue to grey- 
hound breeders of a very large number of schedules in which details of colour 
of sire, dam, and the whole of the resulting litter were to be entered. In 
* We have here in another form the great advantage, amid many disadvantages, of anthropometry as 
compared with craniometry, 
t B. S. Proc. Vol. 61, p. 403. 
X Pearson: "On the Law of Keversion." R. S. Proc. Vol. 66, p. 159. 
§ Pearson and Bramley-Moore: Phil. Trans. Vol. 195, A, pp. 79—150. 
