62 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



arckism proper, while at the same time it is an effective 

 answer to a large part of the argument directed against the 

 transmission of functionally acquired characters. 



Professor Osborn has probably made the most of the argu 

 ment from paleontology, and it must be left to the candid 

 judgment of scientific men to say whether the case is made 

 out. It is of course always possible to say that the initial 

 variations which inaugurated each new adaptation were 

 merely accidental and were seized upon by natural selection, 

 and it is to a large extent a question of faith in the universal 

 efficacy of that theory ; or rather a question in candid minds 

 of the relative reasonableness of that view and of the view 

 which ascribes a considerable part of this initial variation to 

 functionally produced modifications transmitted by heredity. 



It would be unjust to this Society to omit in an enumera 

 tion, however imperfect, of the American defenders of the 

 transmissibility of acquired modifications, your former presi 

 dent Prof. W. H. Ball, whose protracted studies in inverte 

 brate paleontology, conchology, and especially the molluscan 

 life of the deep sea have led him to a full accord with other 

 American workers as regards questions of this class. In his 

 presidential addresses, not to speak of earlier papers, he has 

 emphasized the molding influence of the environment upon 

 the plastic organisms with which he is most familiar, and 

 during the past year he has contributed to the Society one 

 paper* dealing directly with the Nee-Darwinian claims, in 

 which the case is as clearly presented as it has been by any 

 other writer, and in many respects in an entirely new light. 



For myself, I cannot claim to have made any direct contri 

 bution to this specific subject. I have been deeply interested 



*On Dynamic Influences in Evolution, by W. II. Ball. Proc. Biol. 

 Soc. Wash., Vol. VI, pp. i-io. 



