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188   NATURAL INHERITANCE.   [CHAT.

ante. Now we have seen that the personal heritage from either Parent is one quarter, therefore as the total heritage is one half, it follows that the Latent Elements must follow the same law of inheritance as the Personal ones. In other words, either Parent must contribute on the average only one quarter of the Latent Elements, the remainder of them dropping out and their breed becoming absolutely extinguished.

There seems to be much confusion in current ideas about the extent to which ancestral qualities are transmitted, supposing that what occurs occasionally trust occur invariably. If a maternal grandparent be found to contribute some particular quality in one case, and a paternal grandparent in another, it seems to be argued that both contribute elements in every case. This is not a fair inference, as will be seen by the following illustration. A pack of playing cards consists, as we know, of 13 cards of each sort-hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. Let these be shuffled together and a batch of 13 cards dealt out from them, forming the deal, No. 1. There is not a single card in the entire pack that may not appear in these 13, but assuredly they do not all appear. Again, let the 13 cards derived from the above pack, which we will suppose to have green backs, be shuffled with another 13 similarly obtained from a pack with blue backs, and that a deal, No. 2, of 13 cards be made from the combined batches. The result will be of the same kind as before. Any card of either of the two original packs may be found in the deal, No. 2, but certainly