But the truth is that even in 1898 such a comparison was scarcely happy. Not to mention moderns, these high hopes had been finally disposed of by the work of the experimental breeders such as Kölreuter, Knight, Herbert, Gärtner, Wichura, Godron, Naudin, and many more. To have treated as non-existent the work of this group of naturalists, who alone have attempted to solve the problems of heredity and species--Evolution, as we should now say--by the only sound method--_experimental breeding_--to leave out of consideration almost the whole block of evidence collected in _Animals and Plants_--Darwin’s finest legacy as I venture to declare--was unfortunate on the part of any exponent of Heredity, and in the writings of a professed naturalist would have been unpardonable. But even as modified in 1900 the Law of Ancestral Heredity is heavily over-sparred, and any experimental breeder could have increased Pearson’s list of unconformable cases by as many again. But to return to Professor Weldon. He now repeats that the Law of Ancestral Heredity seems likely to prove generally applicable to _blended_ inheritance, but that the case of _alternative_ inheritance is for the present reserved. We should feel more confidence in Professor Weldon’s exposition if he had here reminded us that the special case which fitted Galton’s Law so well that it emboldened him to announce that principle as apparently “universally applicable to bi-sexual descent” was one of _alternative_ inheritance--namely the coat-colour of Basset-hounds. Such a fact is, to say the least, ominous. Pearson, in speaking (1900) of this famous case of Galton’s, says that these phenomena of alternative inheritance must be treated separately (from those of blended inheritance)[59], and for them he deduces a proposed “_law of reversion_,” based of course on ancestry. He writes, “In both cases we may speak of a law of ancestral heredity, but the first predicts the probable character of the individual produced by a given ancestry, while the second tells us the percentages of the total offspring which on the average revert to each ancestral type[60].” [59] “If this be done, we shall, I venture to think, keep not only our minds, but our points for observation, clearer; and further, the failure of Mr Galton’s statement in the one case will not in the least affect its validity in the other.” Pearson (32), p. 143. [60] _Grammar of Science_, 1900, p. 494. See also Pearson, _Proc. Roy. Soc._ 1900, LXVI. pp. 142–3. With the distinctions between the original Law of Ancestral Heredity, the modified form of the same law, and the Law of Reversion, important as all these considerations are, we are not at present concerned.