328 
Miscellanea 
Now it is at this point that a very important consideration comes in. The true Mendelian 
needs the theory of mutations to supplement his position, and other workers, among whom, I 
think, I may inchide Dr Lewis, would say that the deformity started in a sport. Now an 
experience covering many hundreds of human pedigrees leads me to the conclusion, that the 
appearance of deformity in the offspring of normal parents with nothing further known of the 
earlier ancestry is too often only another way of stating that we have not been able to trace fully 
the ancestral and their collateral lines. In very many cases when I can go back through 
a normal parentage, I find directly or collaterally the supposed mutation or sport recurring, and 
we have either to assert (i) that there exists a general tendency to sporting in the stock, or 
(ii) that the deformity is latent and can be carried through normal individuals. It is needless to 
say that (ii) ajjpears to me a more scientific assumption. To stop short at a normal pair with 
the statement ' sport ' or ' mutation ' is logically incomplete, if we wish to demonstrate that the 
deformity is handed down only through deformed individuals. We must show for a generation 
or two in the direct and collateral lines an entire absence of the abnormality. 
It is a very general experience that these abnormal cases belong to the lower classes of the 
population, and that in going back in the pedigree we are invariably checked at but a few genera- 
tions by ignorance as to blood-relationships. Under such circumstances we must either wind up 
with an abnormal individual of unknown parentage or with normal individuals as in Ur Hassel- 
wander's or Dr Lewis' cases. My first consideration is that we have not the evidence necessary 
to speak of the latter as determining a 'sport.' 
My second urgent consideration is this : Is not the time ripe for the collection and publi- 
cation of pedigrees bearing upon normal and abnormal characters in man ? There is an immense 
amount of published material scattered through a wide journalistic area. There is a growing 
tendency for medical men to record more and more completely family histories*. A collection of 
published and unpublished material would be of first class value to students of heredity. The 
primary conditions for svich a collection are : (a) that it shall contain the material only ; no dis- 
cussion of hereditary theories shall form part of its plan, — this ought to allow of all schools 
contributing; (6) that there shall be no selection of special pedigrees for publication, except 
on the score of their completeness and the peculiar interest of their characteristics ; (c) that each 
contributor should be wholly responsible for the accuracy of his facts and for the genealogies which 
should be published under his own name. The duty of the Editor should only be to standardise 
the material received. With a view to providing a collection of this kind, the Galton Laboratory 
of National Eugenics pioposes to issue in parts a T reasunj of Human Inheritance, each part will 
contain 20 to 50 pedigrees arranged on 6 to 10 lithographed plates. The individual plates will 
be devoted to a special characteristic or abnormality. Each pedigree will be accompanied by a 
brief account of the family and its members, and when needful by an illustration of the charac- 
teristic. The Treasury will cover published and unpublished material, and there will be an entire 
absence of any purely theoretical discussions. Full reference will be given to the source of the 
pedigree and to treatises where similar cases are discussed. The Laboratory has already received 
promises of help from members of the medical profession, and from officials in asylums, sanitoria 
and hospitals for special diseases. Is it asking too much to beg our Mendelian friends to give us 
cooperation in this matter, or at any rate to decide on the basis of the first number whether they 
cannot do so I The need for such a repertorium must be as manifest to them, as to all other 
students of heredity, and it would add much to the completeness of our scheme if they did not 
stand aloof from it. The preparation of material for Part I is well advanced and we hope to 
issue it in October. 
K. P. 
* Several hundreds of such pedigrees have already reached the Francis Galton Laboratory for 
National Eugenics. 
