BioConcepts

blending inheritanceMischvererbung (ger.)

• An obsolete theory of heredity proposing that certain traits of an offspring are an average of those of its parents because of the blending of their fluidlike germinal influences; hereditary characters transmitted in this way would not segregate in later generations. (Oxford Dict. of Genetics 2007)
  category heredity see also particulate inheritance

  1887

  In illustrating the effect of perfectly blending inheritance we have merely to mix a glass full of black fluid with a glass full of white fluid and to pour the mixture into two other glasses which represent the two children

  Galton, F. (1887). Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 16, 386-402: 401.

  1900

  [blended inheritance certainly does not cover the whole field of heredity. When a character blends, then this law of ancestral heredity tells us the most probable blend for the offspring of given ancestry.

  Pearson, K. (1900). Mathematical contributions to the theory of evolution. On the law of reversion. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 66, 140-164: 141.]

  1902

  [blended inheritance

  Bateson, W. (1902). The problems of heredity and their solution (Scientific Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge 1928, 4-28): 25.]

  1982

  blending inheritance Inheritance in which parental traits appear to blend in the offspring, with no apparent segregation in subsequent generations; cf. particulate inheritance.    

  Lincoln, R.J., Boxshall, G.A. & Clark, P.F. (1982). A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics: 35.