23G NATURAL INHERITANCE.
parison is made in the bottom line of the Table by adding together the instances in which the Fraternities are from 4 to 6 in number, and in taking only those in which all the members of the Fraternity were alike in temper, whether good or bad. There are 7 + 7, or 14, observed cases of this against 2+2, or 4, haphazard cases, fount in a total of 49 Fraternities. Hence it follows that the domestic influences that tend to differentiate temper wholly fail to overcome the influences, hereditary and other, that tend to make it uniform in the same Fraternity.
As regards direct evidences of heredity of temper, we must frame our inquiries under a just sense of the sort of materials we have to depend upon. They are but coarse portraits scored with white or black, and sorted into two heaps, irrespective of the gradations of tint in the originals. The processes I have used in discussing the heredity of stature, -eye-colour, and artistic faculty, cannot be employed in dealing with the heredity of temper. I must now renounce those refined operations and set to work with ruder tools on my rough material.
The first inquiry will be, Do good-tempered parents have, on the whole, good-tempered children, and do bad-tempered parents have bad-tempered ones 'l I have 43 cases where both parents are recorded as good-tempered, and 25 where they were both badtempered. Out of the children of the former, 30 per cent. were good-tempered and 10 per cent. bad ; out of the latter, 4 per cent. were good and 52 per cent, bad-tempered, This is emphatic testimony to the heredity of temper. I have worked out the other less contrasted combinations of parental temper, but the results are hardly worth giving. There is also much variability in the proportions of the neutral cases.
I then attempted, with still more success, to answer the converse question, Do good-tempered Fraternities have, on the whole, goodtempered ancestors, and bad tempered Fraternities bad-tempered ones I After some consideration of the materials, I defined-rightly or wrongly-a good-tempered Fraternity as one in which at least two members were good-tempered and none were bad, and a hadtempered Fraternity as one in which at least two members were bad-tempered, whether or no any cases of good temper were said to be associated with them. Then, as regards the ancestors, I thought
