HEREDITY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 118, 20 May 1932, Page 9

HEREDITY

A STUDY IN HOKSES

FIFTY YEARS' RECORDS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

NEW YOEK, 13th April

If the heredity of men resembles that of horses, as science has reason .to believe, the chances of predicting hereditary capacity in both man and horses are now considerably improved. The chance of a given capacity is comput-ed-from the distribution of capacity in the near-blood kin.

This "genius "ration in horses is one in 2000. That moans the chance of breeding a Pliar Lap at one extreme or a "plater" at.the other. This has been carefully, determined by a tenyear study by Dr. Harry H. "Laughlin of records for fifty years past of the 10,000 best thoroughbred race horses of America, Britain, and France at the genetics record office here of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The study of. thoroughbreds, which has its human application, is one of the most monumental Smd useful of scientific researches in heredity. In this investigation the thoroughbred horse was studied because it is the only large animal having complete individual performance and, heredity records of a mathematical nature.

Scientists possess thousands of experimental proofs that the fundamental laws of heredity are the same in animals, plants, and men. The horse is peculiarly fit for this trial, every capacity being, like intelligence in man, a highly complex function.

The ten-year thoroughbred study only now is reaching the stage summation of discovery of the probabilities. This rule for breeding exceptional horses is one of the first findings.

The measure of capacity in the individual horse is called the* biological handicap. Among horses the range of possible excellence is represented by the numbers 5a to 135,' the first the lowest and the last the highest possible performance. .-; i

Man o' War, the famous American racehorse-, is rated 137 plus. The average horse will rate about 90 to 95. The possibility of rating 110 is less. than 9 per cent., and 130 to 135, the topmost quality, has one chance in 2000 among American thoroughbreds. ' -. .

But likewise the chance for the lowest rating—a thoroughbred which could race with a capacity of biological "handicap equal to about 10 or 15—is one in approximately 2000. Thus, in heredity, dunces have an equal frequency chance with genius. . *