OCR Rendition - approximate

CHAPTER II.

PROCESSES IN HEREDITY.

Natural and Acquired Peculiarities.-Transmutation of Female into Male Measures.-Particulate Inheritance.-Family Likeness and Individual Variation.-Latent Characteristics.-Heritages that Blend and those

that are Mutually Exclusive.-Inheritance of Acquired Faculties.Variety of Petty Influences.

A CONCISE account of the chief processes in heredity will be given in this chapter, partly. to serve as a reminder to those to whom the works of Darwin especially, and of other writers on the subject, are not familiar, but principally for the sake of presenting them under an aspect that best justifies the methods of investigation about to be employed.

Natural and Acquired Peculiarities.-The peculiarities of men may be roughly sorted into those that are natural and those that are acquired. It is of the former that I am about to speak in this book. They are noticeable in every direction, but are nowhere so remarkable as in those twins who have been dissimilar

i See Human Faculty, 237.