On the whole, it may be said, that we have a few cases of definite increase and a goodly number very doubtful. We really need to have the first of the principal recommendations of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration carried out in all countries, for, the more we subject the available data to critical scrutiny, the more we see the hopelessness of attaining to any real and fruitful conclusions, unless we have an efficient organisation of capable workers, backed by governmental as well as private support.
[THE SO-CALLED LAWS OF INHERITANCE IN MAN.]
(Abstract.)
By Professor V. Guiffrida-Ruggeri,
Professor of Anthropology, Naples.
The Mendelian laws find verification in man. Every race, whether a sub-species or a variety, has an hereditary possession of certain characters; a possession which is completely transmitted to the descendants, in whom is preserved the same germ plasm as in the progenitors.
The researches of C. B. and G. Davenport seem to have proved the recessive character of albinism and its obedience to the Mendelian law. Hurst has presented figures which show that the inheritance of colour in the iris of the human eye obeys Mendelian laws. Davenport has established the order of dominance by the form of hair, which also obeys the Mendelian law.
De Quatrefages, many years before the re-affirmation of Mendel's discoveries, wrote:—
"The union of individuals of different races involves a contest between their two natures—a contest of which the theatre is the field where the new being is organised. Now, this contest does not take place en bloc, so to speak, as has been generally admitted. Each of the characters of the two parents struggles on its own account against the corresponding character (its antagonist, as has just been said). When the hereditary energy is equal on both sides there necessarily ensues a kind of process of which the consequence is the fusion of the maternal and paternal characters in an intermediate character. If the energies are very unequal the hybrid inherits a character borrowed entirely from one of his parents; but this parent, conqueror on one point, may be conquered upon another. Hence, there results with the hybrid a juxtaposition of characters derived from each of the types of which he is the child."
Above all, I have wished to call attention to the so-called laws of dominance, because of their great importance. We may conclude that in the case of man the dominant characters are also the original ones.