288 
PEOFESSOR K. PEARSON AND OTHERS ON 
iiiust depend on the vai iability of the sperm cells and the ova which may each he fairly 
considered as “ undifferentiated like organs.” Here again we are not comjjelled to 
assert that much or little is due to environment and little or much is due to inherent 
ancestral influence. All we assume is that such causes as produce the likeness 
between leaves of the same tree, or florets on the same flower, produce the likeness 
between sjjermatozoa or ova of the same individual, and that on this likeness the 
ultimate resemblance of offspring from the same 2 )arent depends. We have then to 
investigate how the (piantitative resemblance between offspring of the same parents 
is related to the quantitative resemblance between the undifferentiated like organs in 
the individual; and then we must test on as wide a range of data as possible this 
theoretical relationship. 
Now the reader will perceive at once that if we can throw back the resemblance of 
offspring of the same parents upon the resemblance between the undifferentiated like 
organs of the Individual, we shall have largely simplified the whole problem of 
iidieritance. Inheritance will not be a peculiar feature of the reproductive cells. 
One frog, let us say, diffei’s from another in that it produces blood corpuscles more or 
less alike and unlike those of another frog. In the simplest forms of reproduction, 
budding and parthenogenesis, the offspring will not be absolutely alike, for buds and 
ova are undifferentiated like organs, and such organs have only a limited degree of 
resemblance. If tliis view be coi'rect, variability is not a peculiarity of sexual reijro- 
duction, it is something peculiar to the })roduction of undifferentiated like organs in 
the individual, and the problems of heredity must largely turn on how the resem- 
Ijlance between such organs is modified, if modified at all, by the conditions of nurture, 
groAvth, and environment generally. ()ur discussion of the subject will naturally break 
up into the following divisions : 
(a.) On the theoretical relationship between the correlation of offspring and the 
Correlation of undifferentiated like organs in the individual. 
(h.) A determination of the correlation of undifferentiated like organs for as wide a 
range of life as possible. 
The present paper deals only with variation and correlation in the vegetable king¬ 
dom, but the data for variation and corielation in the animal kingdom are being 
c(.)llected at the same time. 
(c.) A comparison of the degree to Avhich the results obtained from (6) satisfies the 
observed values of fraternal correlation already found when A\'e use the relation 
determined in [n). 
II. TilEORETlCAL DlSCUSSlOX OE THE IvELATlOX OF 
Fraternal 
CORl’iELATlON TO 
THE Correlation of 
Undifferentiated like Organs. 
(2.) Let ; be the deviatli>n fi'Ann the mean of the general population of any indi¬ 
vidual will) regard to any character. Let us suppose to depend upon certain 
