TEANSMISSION OF ACQUIEED CHAKACTERS. 213 



route from the egg to the complete animal." This process 

 of obscuring and shortening is determined by the law of 

 abridged transmission, and I mention it here specially be- 

 cause it is of great importance for the understanding of 

 embryology, and because it explains the fact, at first so 

 strano^e, that the whole series of forms which our ancestors 

 have passed through in their gradual development are no 

 lonocer visible in the series of forms of our own individual 

 development from the egg. 



Opposed to the laws of the conservative transmission, 

 hitherto discussed, are the phenomena of the transmission of 

 the second series, that is, the laws of progressive transmis- 

 sion hy inheritance. As already mentioned, they depend 

 upon the fact that the organism transmits to its descendants 

 not only those qualities which it has inherited from its own 

 ancestors, but also a number of those individual qualities 

 which it has acquired during its own lifetime. Adaptation 

 is here seen to be connected with transmission by inherit- 

 ance (Gen. Morph. ii. 186). 



At the head of these important phenomena of progressive 

 transmission, we may mention the law of adapted or ac- 

 quired transmission. In reality it asserts nothing more 

 than what I have said above, that in certain circumstances 

 the organism is capable of transmitting to its descendants 

 all the qualities which it has acquired during its own life 

 by adaptation. This phenomenon, of course, shows itself 

 most distinctly when the newly acquired peculiarity pro- 

 duces any considerable change in the inherited form. This 

 is the case in the examples I mentioned in the preceding 

 chapter as to transmission in general, in the case of the men 

 with six fingers and toes, the porcupine men, copper beeches, 



