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CHAPTER XI.

LATENT ELEMENTS.

Latent Elements not very numerous.-Pure Breed.-Simplification of
Hereditary Inquiry.

Latent Elements not very numerous.-It is not possible that more than one half of the varieties and number of each of the parental elements, latent or personal, can on the average subsist in the offspring. For if every variety contributed its representative, each child would on the average contain actually or potentially twice the variety and twice the number of the elements (whatever they may be) that were possessed at the same stage of its life by either of its parents, four times that of any one of its grandparents, 1024 times as many as any one of its ancestors in the 10th degree, and so on, which is absurd. Therefore as regards any variety of the entire inheritance, whether it be dormant or personal, the chance of its dropping out must on the whole be equal to that of its being retained, and only one half of the varieties can on the average be passed on by inherit-