The same principles undoubtedly apply to the human race, although as yet only a few traits have been carefully studied. Eye color is one of these. Imagine a marriage of a thoroughbred, black-eyed Italian with a thoroughbred, blue-eyed Irish. What will be the result? All the children will be black-eyed, black being dominant over blue; but these black eyes are not the genuine article that the Italian parent possessed. They are a blend, and it is only because the black element dominates over or conceals the blue element that we can not see on the surface that there is any blue there. But it may come out in the next generation; for, if these half-blooded individuals marry among themselves one-quarter of their children on the average will be blue-eyed. The other three-quarters will be black-eyed, but only one-quarter will be "really and truly" black-eyed, i.e., black-eyed like the Italian. The remaining half are hybrid black, like the parents. It is only a sort of imitation black so to speak. The appearance of blue eyes in the second generation is the long observed but formerly mysterious "atavism," or reversion to the grandparent. Suppose the children of an Italian and an Irish parent intermarry with pure bred Italians. We immediately know what will be the result. All the children will be black-eyed, but among a large number only half will be thoroughbred black-eyed. The other half will be "imitation" black-eyed. The case is just like the mating of hybrid black guinea pigs with thoroughbred black guinea pigs, or of the blue fowl with the black. Similarly, if the Irish-Italian hybrids marry with pure Irish, half the offspring will be blue-eyed and half will be hybrid black-eyed. [Sidenote: Dominants and Recessives] Black eyes are "dominant" over blue eyes because the black color is due to a pigment, while the blue color is due to the absence of this pigment. In general a quality which is due to the presence of some positive element is dominant over a quality due to the absence of that element. A child inheriting from a blue-eyed person simply draws a blank from that side in the lottery. In order to understand how these principles of Mendel apply in any given case we need first to know what traits are "dominant" and what are "recessive." Among traits known to be "dominant" are, besides pigmentation of the eye, certain peculiarities of the skeleton, such as short-fingeredness (two phalanges only on each digit), Huntington's chorea, presenile cataract, congenital thickening of the skin, early absence of hair, diabetes insipidus, stationary night-blindness, liability to periodic outbreak of temper, etc. Among traits known to be "recessive" are albinism (or lack of pigmentation), a certain degenerative disease of the eye, deafmutism, imbecility, insanity of certain types, certain nervous diseases; also mental traits, such as musical ability.