 In rejecting such a “transmission-conception” of heredity (his term), Johannsen sought specifically to depart from two approaches: a) the analysis by biometricians of continuous variation (such as the spread of heights in a given population), which showed traits of offspring to be numerically correlated with those of their parents, grandparents, and so on—such analysis preserved the possibility of “ancestral influences” (1911: 138); and b) particulate theories, such as those of August Weismann and Darwinians that could be seen as consistent with transmission of parental traits to the zygote (the initial cell resulting from a fusion of gametes or germ cells, i.e., egg and sperm). Johannsen saw no evidence for the idea that the “elements responsible for inheritance… involve the different organs or tissue-groups of the individual developing from the zygote” (1911: 131).