472 
Miscellanea 
Again : " Non essendo ancora dimostrato 1' albinismo ereditario nelF uonio, si dimanderebbe 
sempre ; quale h la causa prossima che lo ingenera ? " 
Therefore the parents of family No. 7 were not as Professor Weldon states, both albinos, but 
both pigmented. The woi'ds which misled him, " Gli antenati furono tutti bianchissimi " plainly 
refer to " the extraordinary fairness of many blonde persons, who were still slightly pigmented," 
a phenomenon witnessed by Professor Weldon himself in Sicily. 
On the other hand this correction somewhat increases the discrepancy from Mendelian 
expectation to which Professor Weldon also calls attention. The families from supposed DR 
parents, as corrected, contained 86 pigmented, and 52 albinos, the expectation being 103'5 and 
34-5, a notable deficiency of normals. 
For several reasons I suspect that these numbers must be taxed before any deduction can be 
drawn with great confidence from the deficiency of normals ; but it is by no means improbable 
that the deficiency does indicate some real complication, which indeed may on other grounds be 
already apprehended. 
When I had occasion to refer to albinism in Man I wrote as follows {P. Z. S., 1903, ii. p. 77) 
"Naturally we may inquire whether albinism in Man is not a similar recessive. Castle has given 
evidence pointing in this direction. The occurrence of albinism in the families of fir.st cousins 
(see Day, Seligmann, &c.) is consistent with this view; but there are a few recorded cases of the 
occurrence of albinos in the offspring of albinos breeding witli normal parents, where the hypo- 
thesis that the normal parent was DR is not at all easily admissible. No case of the union of 
two human albinos is known to me. The matter cannot here be further discussed, and the reader 
must refer to the literature, the most important paper being that of Cornaz." 
These words seem to me to express very clearly the doubt I then felt (1903). It was surpris- 
ing to find them transformed by Professor Weldon into the statement that " the suggestion 
[that albinism in Man has a Mendelian behaviour] is considered probable by Bateson." Never- 
theless after further experience, and especially after study of Arcoleo's paper (previously known 
to me by title only) with its record of 5 families bred within the 2nd canonical degree of 
I'elationship, I now lean with some decision towards the view that albinism in Man will be 
shown to have a Mendelian inheritance, possibly, as I said above, with a complication. 
W. BATESON. 
25 November, 1904. 
[I think Dr Arcoleo's memoir hardly bears out in one respect the interpretation Mr Bateson 
puts upon it. I am not clear what Dr Arcoleo means by the words cited by Mr Bateson at the 
bottom of p. 471. The emphasis may be on nel modo and di tal genere. They may refer to 
the special type and intensity of the albinism, for example in regard to defective vision and 
nystagmus. But I do not think it possible to interpret them in the sense of Mr Bateson : 
" Here Arcoleo states explicitly that he never met with any case of an albino child being born to 
an albino parent." Dr Arcoleo states explicitly that the mother of the four albinos in Family 
No. 6 was "una albina di belle forme," and the union (within the second canonical degree) arose 
from the desire on the part of the Cav. N. N. to have an albino daughter like her. If the 
Cavaliere was DD then the case is in favour of Professor Weldon ; if he was DR, then the result 
in this family, 4 albinotic and 7 pigmented offspring, was reasonably in accordance with the 
Mendelian expectation, wliich is 5 5 + 1. K. P.] 
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. AND C. P. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
