ca. VIII.] DISCUSSION OF THE DATA OF EYE COLOUR. 139
behaviour than perhaps any other common qualities. Parents of different Statures usually transmit a blended heritage to their children, but parents of different Eyecolours usually transmit an alternative heritage. If one parent is as much taller than the average of his or her sex as the other parent is shorter, the Statures of their children will be distributed, as we have already seen, in nearly the same way as if the parents had both been of medium height. But if one parent has a light Eyecolour and the other a dark Eye-colour, some of the children will, as a rule, be light and the rest dark ; they will seldom be medium eye-coloured, like the children of medium eye-coloured parents. The blending in Stature is due to its being the aggregate of the quasiindependent inheritances of many separate parts, while Eye-colour appears to be much less various in its origin. If notwithstanding this two-fold difference between the qualities of Stature and Eye-colour, the shares of hereditary contribution from the various ancestors are alike in the two cases, as I shall show that they are, we may with some confidence expect that the law by which those hereditary contributions are found to be governed, may be widely, and perhaps universally applicable.
Data.-My data for hereditary Eye-colour are drawn from the same collection of " Records of Family Faculties" (" R.F.F.") as those upon which the inquiries into hereditary Stature were principally based. I have analysed the general value of these data in respect to
