investigators, for the amount of care and cost that might profitably be expended in improving the race clearly depends on its result.
Descent of Qualities in a Population.—Let us now endeavour to obtain a correct understanding of the way in which the varying qualities of each generation are derived from those of its predecessor. How many, for example, of the V class in the offspring come respectively from the V, U, T, S and other classes of parentage? The means of calculating this question for a normal population are given fully in my “Natural Inheritance.” There are three main senses in which the word parentage might be used. They differ widely, so the calculations must be modified accordingly, (1) The amount of the quality or faculty in question may be known in each parent. (2) It may be known in only one parent. (3) The two parents may belong to the same class, a V-class father in the scale of male classification always marrying a V-class mother, occupying identically the same position in the scale of female classification.
I select this last case to work out as being the one with which we shall here be chiefly concerned. It has the further merit of escaping some tedious preliminary details about converting female faculties into their corresponding male equivalents, before men and women can be treated statistically on equal terms. I shall assume in what follows that we are dealing with an ideal population, in which all marriages are equally fertile, and which is statistically the same in successive generations both in numbers and in qualities, so many per cent. being always this, so many always that, and so on. Further, I shall take no notice of offspring who die before they reach the age of marriage, nor shall I regard the slight numerical inequality of the sexes, but will simply suppose that each parentage produces one couplet of grown-up filials, an adult man and an adult woman.