Prometheus, or, biology and the advancement of man / by H.S. Jennings.

  • Herbert Spencer Jennings
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Prometheus, or, biology and the advancement of man / by H.S. Jennings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    87/112 (page 83)
    THE ADVANCEMENT OF MAN binations, occurring, according to the laws of permutations, only once in thousands of instances. When they are taken apart, the new combinations made are almost certain to be the commoner types, less valuable than their parents. What occurs in such cases is seen when one of the valuable fruits—a fine variety of apple or orange —is allowed to reproduce by seed, forming thus new combinations of genes. Among the offspring are many types, mostly inferior ones, thomy, irregular, weak plants with worthless fruits. Almost never is one produced that equals the parent. This is the sort of thing that occurs regularly in man. But the same is true for the poor combinations. They, too, must dis¬ integrate and pass into new groupings ; and now the offspring may be better [85]