II.] PROCESSES IN HEREDITY. 17
obtain precise information concerning the penumbra of uncertainty that attaches itself to single predictions. It would be premature to speak further of this at present ; what has been said is enough to give a clue to the chief motive of this chapter. Its intention has been to show the large part that is always played by chance in the course of hereditary transmission, and to establish the importance of an intelligent use of the laws of chance and of the statistical methods that are based upon them, in expressing the conditions under which heredity acts.
I may here point out that, as the processes of statistics are themselves processes of intimate blendings, their results are the same, whether the materials bad been partially blended or not, before they were statistically taken in hand.
