"On a criterion which may serve to test various theories of inheritance." In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LXXIII.

London:: Harrison and Sons, 1904., 1904. 8vo. Pages 262-280. [Entire volume: viii, 548 pp.] 2 diagrams, tables. Original blind-stamped navy cloth, gilt spine; re-backed, new end-leaves. Ex library copy, paper spine label removed. Fine. FIRST EDITION. Francis Galton was influenced by Darwin's belief that inheritance is conditioned by a blending mechanism. Galton propounded his law of ancestral heredity, which set the average contribution of each parent at 1/4, of each grandparent at 1/16, and so forth. Pearson and his colleagues pursued the notion in a series (truncated) of sophisticated researches, but Galton's law received withering criticisms after the rediscovery, in 1900, of Mendel's work on particulate inheritance. Here Pearson proposes a variability criterion between contending theories of inheritance. See: DSB, X, pp. 447-473. (Inventory #: S6148)