V. G. Ruggeri. Biology and Eugenics.45
feature except the character of the hair(i). This separation, says the same
Bean, confirms the second law of Mendel, and not only for the hair, but for
the physiognomy, for the shape of the ear, for the shape of the nose, for
the length of the extremities. All these characters exist as unities separately
hereditary, character-unities. But it also follows that several of these char
acters agree amongst each other so that their totality can be also inherited
as a character-unity.
In other words, the independence of the characters, what is called the
third law of Mendel, is verified, that is to say, when the parents, instead
of differing by a single character (whence the descendants are mono-hybrids),
differ by two or more characters (whence these are di-hybrids or poly-
hybrids, according to the terminology of De Vries), then the single antagon
istic pairs of characters act independently one of the other, and the same
holds good for those antagonistic pairs which are formed of more reunited
characters, as was said above, which Bateson has called “ compound
allelomorphs. ”
It can be imagined what varieties of results take place in the poly
hybrids of the Philippinos, granted that the dominant or subject character
can appear according to the known proportions. Let us suppose that it is a
question of tri-hybrids : indicating the three dominant characters by the
three capital letters and the three corresponding recessive characters by the
respective small letters we get for F, with the exception of the eventual
case (verified in certain experiments of Bateson) of “ incompatibility of
character 27 ABC : 9 a B C: 9 ABc: 9 A b C: 3 Abe: 3 aBc:
3 abC: iabc.
But besides that we can also have the fusion of antagonistic characters(2).
Bean, in fact, confirms the view that wavy hair appears as the product of
crossings between the curly-haired and the smooth-haired(3), while, as is
well known, in other regions, e.g., in many South Americans, it is an
autonomous character. What is still stranger is the dominance of the smooth
face over the hairy face, which would tend to show that the deficiency in
the hair-bearing structures, which Morselli advances as a progressive and
recent character, is perhaps a more ancient mutation than the other, shown
by an arrest of development, like the featherless neck of certain fowl of
which Cuenot speaks.
It is extraordinary how De Quatrefages, with a naturalist’s true intuition,
should have seen all this previous to the re-affirmation of Mendel’s dis
coveries, of which, like his contemporaries, he was certainly ignorant. And in
order that the merit should not be attributed to other anthropologists (which
can result from ignorance or servility, if it has not already done so), I wish
to refer in extenso to what he wrote almost a quarter of a century ago—
(1) R. Bennett Bean, Types of Negrito hi the Philippine Islands. American Anthro
pologist, 1910, p. 234.
(2) V. Haecker, Op. cit. p. 296.
(3) R. Bennett Bean, Philippine Types. American Anthropologist, 1910, n. 3, p. 381.
