Note 55 — A DEFENCE OF MENDEL’S PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY.

I have searched Professor Pearson’s paper in vain for any considerable reservation regarding or modification of this general statement. Professor Pearson enuntiates the law as “only correct on certain limiting hypotheses,” but he declares that of these the most important is “the absence of reproductive selection, i.e. the negligible correlation of fertility with the inherited character, and the absence of sexual selection.” The case of in-and-in breeding is also reserved.