it derives in the bulk of its text from its fundamental or primary original, but is strictly that belonging to the common ancestor of its secondary original and of the other members of the group. Such readings might be truly described as forming a series of minute fragments of a copy of the lost document which was the secondary original, leaving corresponding gaps in the more or less faithfully preserved text of the primary original, except where conflate readings have wholly or partly preserved both texts. In the next Part we shall have ample opportunity of illustrating what has here been said.
SECTION V. RECAPITULATION OF METHODS IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER
79—84
79. To recapitulate. The method of Genealogy is an application of one part of the knowledge of Documents; and like the method founded on the Internal Evidence of Documents it involves three processes; first the analysis and comparison of the documentary evidence for a succession of individual variations; next the investigation of the genealogical relations between the documents, and therefore between their ancestors, by means of the materials first obtained; and thirdly the application of these genealogical relations to the interpretation of the documentary evidence for each individual variation. The results of the interpretation of documentary evidence thus and thus alone made possible are various. In the first place it winnows away a multitude of readings which genealogical relations prove to be of late origin, and which therefore cannot have been derived by transmission from the autograph. Where the extant evidence suggests but
