A REMARKABLE ANTICIPATION, ETC. 2S3 



of the work is headed (p. 536), " Laws of the Animal 

 Economy in Regard to the Hereditary Transmission of 

 Peculiarities of Structure " ; the brief title at the head of the 

 pages runs " Laws of Nature in Hereditary Transmission ". 

 I'his discussion, which forestalls by more than half a century 

 the considerations and conclusions of recent writers and 

 especially of Professor Weismann, is opened by the state- 

 ment that physiological writers have often inquired "what 

 peculiarities of structure are liable to be transmitted by 

 parents to their offspring, and what terminate with the 

 individual without affecting the race. Perhaps the following 

 remark," the author goes on to say, "may afford the solution 

 of this inquiry ". 



I must now quote without any omission the succeeding 

 two paragraphs in which the two classes of characters — 

 inherent and acquired — are defined, as fully and clearly 

 as they have ever been, and the opinion is strongly ex- 

 pressed that the former are transmissible, the latter non- 

 transmissible by heredity : — 



" It appears to be a general fact, that all connate varieties 

 of structure, or peculiarities which are congenital, or which 

 form a part of the natural constitution impressed on an 

 individual from his birth, or rather from the commencement 

 of his organization, whether they happen to descend to him 

 from a long inheritance, or to spring u[) for the first time in 

 his own person — for this is perhaps altogether indifferent — 

 are apt to re-appear in his offspring. It may be said, in 

 other words, that the organization of the offspring is always 

 modelled according to the type of the original structure of 

 the parent." 



" On the other hand, changes produced by external 

 causes in the appearance or constitution ot the individual 

 are temporary, and, in general, acquired characters are 

 transient ; they terminate with the individual, and have no 

 influence on the progeny." 



At this point the author adds a most interesting foot- 

 note in which he tells us (p. 537) that "this distinction, 

 which has not been pointed out by any former writer on 

 physiological subjects, was first suggested to me in conversa- 



