Perhaps an apology is needed for introducing the much-abused word "potency"; but there is hardly another that can be so readily adapted to the precise definition I desire to give to it. The potency of a character may be defined as the capacity of its germinal determiner to complete its entire ontogeny. If we think of every character as being represented in the germ by a determiner, then we must recognize the fact that this determiner may sometimes develop fully, sometimes imperfectly, and sometimes not at all. When such a failure occurs in a normal strain a sport results. Potency is variable. Even in a pure strain a determiner does not always develop fully, and this is an important cause of individual variability. But in a heterozygote potency is usually more or less reduced. When the reduction is slight _dominance_ is nearly complete; but when the reduction is great dominance is more or less incomplete and, in the extreme case, may be absent altogether. The series of cases of varying perfection of dominance described in this work illustrate at the same time varying potency. The extreme case is that of the rumpless fowl. The character in this case is an inhibitor of tail development. This character has arisen among vertebrates repeatedly and has become perpetuated in some amphibia and primates, including man. In the case of our cock No. 117, the action of the inhibitor is very weak, so that in the heterozygote the development of the tail is not interfered with at all and even in extracted dominants it interferes little with tail development, so that it makes itself felt only in reduced size of the uropygium and in bent or shortened back. But in No. 116 the inhibiting determiner is strong. It develops fully in about 47 per cent of the heterozygotes and 2 extracted dominants may produce a family in _all_ of which the tail's development is inhibited. In the case of the rumpless condition that arose apparently _de novo_ in my yards, the new inhibitor showed an intermediate potency completely stopping the tail development in 1 out of 25 heterozygotes. These three cases afford a striking illustration of a variation in the potency of the same inhibiting character in different strains. Not only is potency variable, but its variations seem, in some cases, to be inheritable. This we have seen to be the case with the Y-comb (p. 15); with the extra-toed condition of Houdans (p. 23); and with rumplessness (_cf._ offspring of No. 117 as compared with No. 116, p. 40). On the other hand, the extra-toed condition of Silkies, the grade of clean shank, and the degree of closure of nostril seem not to be inherited. D. REVERSION AND THE FACTOR HYPOTHESIS.