166 EVOLUTION AND GENETICS 



have had their tails removed for generations and 

 that puppies and lambs are born still with tails. Both 

 Cope and Weismann cut off the tails of mice for sev- 

 eral generations without producing bobt ailed mice. 

 We do not have to go to the lower animals to get 

 evidence. The several kinds of mutilations and re- 

 movals that man has practised on his own body for 

 centuries have left no permanent record on the race. 



From removals to distortions is a distinct step, 

 since it has been said by some of the Lamarckians 

 when pressed for evidence of the inheritance of loss 

 of parts, that, after all, the part is gone, and could 

 not be supposed to transmit its absence. This eva- 

 sion does not cover the case when a distortion is in 

 question. The stock case is the flat fish, which, ac- 

 cording to Cunningham, owes its asymmetry to the 

 habits acquired by its ancestors that came to lie on 

 their sides at the bottom of the sea. One eve was 

 thereby put out of commission, but, as a result of the 

 muscles pulling it over so that it could peep around 

 the corner of its own head and look up, the eye 

 slowlv shifted "in time" until todav it too lies on the 

 side of the head that is upj)ermost — otherwise, of 

 course, it would have been expected to degenerate. 



We do not have to go to Eocene times for evi- 

 dence. Chinese women of high caste have had their 

 feet bound and deformed for many generations, and 

 now that the custom is being abandoned the children 

 do not appear to have feet different from those of 



