140 MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 



be quoted in the affirmative, while Wallace, Weismann, 

 Lankester, and the majority of the younger English 

 biologists take the negative. Darwin's later views in 

 this matter are most clearly stated in his correspondence 

 with Moritz Wagner : " In my opinion the greatest 

 error which I have committed has been not allowing: 

 sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, 

 i.e. food, climate, etc., independently of natural selec- 

 tion." I quote this because Lankester has tried to 

 show in a letter to Nature that Darwin never adopted 

 the views of Lamarck. 



The general drift of my own views is that upon the 

 side of evolution, or non-repetition in inheritance, the 

 Lamarckians have much the best of it ; while upon 

 the side of repetition and of embryology, their opponents 

 are strongest. It has been said, '' Heaven deliver us 

 from our friends," and I must confess that, upon care- 

 fully analyzing the arguments of some of the neo-La- 

 marckians, I find almost as much against as for the 

 principle they are advocating. The palaeontological 

 evidence appears to be the least vulnerable. For ex- 

 ample, the evolution of the horse's foot seems to afford 

 conclusive proof of the inherited effects of use and dis- 

 use ; yet when we consider the enormous period of time 

 which the reduction of the second and fourth di^rits has 

 required since the lower Miocene period, when they 

 became absolutely useless, the force of the argument is 

 somewhat invalidated. Again, in the teeth, the evi- 

 dence for kinetogenesis is not without exceptions. We 

 require more accurate observation and more logical 

 reasoning, especially directed to the facts of transforma- 

 tion in their bearing upon inheritance. 



