Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-11-21

tut luCctlOh VI Vi StdtQIC stllN
types and their inheritance, before the
Anthropological Section of the British
Association, stated that his statistical in
quiries had developed the fact that the
child inherits partly from his parents and
partly from his ancestry. He has estab-
lished that there is reasonable and all
pervadins law in both vegetable and ami
NAL life, that the further the genealogy of
the child goes back, the more numerous
and varied will his ancestry become, until
they cease to differ from any equally nu-
nerous sample taken at hap-hazard from
the race at large Their mean stature will
then be the same as that of the race, or
mediocre. 4 The average repression of the
offspring to a constant fraction of their
mid-parental deviations is a reasonable
law. Ii tells heavily against the full
hereditary transmission of any rare and
valuable gift, as only few of many child
rem would resemble their mid-parentage.
The more exceptional the gift, the more
exceptional will be the good fortune of the
parent who has son who ovegpasses him.
1t is an even-handed law, for it levies the
same heavy poSsesslon-tax on the trans
mission of badness as well as of goodness.
If it discourages the extravagant expecta-
tions of gifted parents that their children
will inherit all their powers, it no less dis
courages extravagant fears that they will
inherit all their weaknesses and diseases.
We have synopsized so much OF the refec-
tons of Mr.. Dalton from the sketch in the
Popular Science Monthly, to invite the at
tention of the reader to the result of his
own observations and inquiry in heredity.
We are convinced that they will find even
that narrow range of retrospection and re-
search to justify Dalton's conclusions, and
to account for the surprises that come
within the knowledge of all in the matter
of the character Of the fruit the parental
tree bears. 1t will present itself on re-
tiection forcibly TO any one who pauses even
for a brief time to consider it, that the
law Dalton lays down is a wise and neces-
sary one in the code of transmission. 1t
will develop the conviction that any other
law in heredity would result in either the
speedy degeneration of the race of man to
the merely animal level, or else in an ex-
altation impossible to contemplate. 1t is
within the experience of every one of ma
ture years that the expectation of progeny
among parents is very rarely realized as to
character and types. The gifted son to
the gifted father is the exception, and vet,
with the experience of the operations of the
law referred to before us, it is still
the common expression of surprise
that children are so frequently unlike the
characteristics traceable in parental stems.
Dalton goes still further, and points out
that the repression which preserves in the
race fair level of intellectually and
morals, so operates that it is more frequent
ly the case that an exceptional man is the
somewhat exceptional son of rather medi-
OGRE parents, than the average son of very
exceptional parents. Professor Asa Gray.
the eminent botanist, in one of his reviews
of Darwin's origin of species, remarks that
we know no more of the reason why the
progeny occasionally deyiates from the
parent than We do why it usually resem-
bles it; and he adds, that the laws govern
ing inheritance are apparently inScrutable.
But under the Daltonian experiments it is
shown that the deviation-at least as to
stature-is not occasional but prevalent.
In his experiments with. seeds, Dalton
proved that the offspring does not tend to
resemble the parent seed in size, but to be
always more mediocre than they; to be
smaller than the parents if the parents
were large, to be larger than the parents if
the parents were very small. Applying
this inquiry to the human race he found
the law to still obtain. OF course the law
of race that individuals reproduce their
like remains untouched, and the law by
which notifications in the physical and
mental attributes are worked out in the
race through inheritance may be that
which Dalton declares