Heredity in General.—Heredity is a general phenomenon of natural life. The offspring resembles the parent to a greater or less degree. In the human species, also, children on the average resemble their own parents more closely than they resemble other persons, but the degree to which this resemblance is manifested is a variable one, and it remains an open question whether the concrete qualities and capabilities whereby the parents are distinguished from other persons are transmitted to their offspring by inheritance. It is possible that the qualities of the parents may not appear at all in the children; that they may appear somewhat modified, or in a very different form; that they may remain latent in one or more generations, to reappear in the ............