192 TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



taken, our theorem, if carefully attended to, will serve to make 

 the issue clearer. 



In regard to germinal variations, whose transmissibility is 

 undoubted, it is well known that there may be different degrees 

 of transmission, or, more cautiously stated, that the offspring's 

 hereditarily determined reproduction of the parental variation 

 may have diverse expressions. It seems just, therefore, to 

 imagine that there might be different degrees in the transmission 

 of modifications. 



(i) The first degree of transmissibility would be illustrated 

 if the offspring showed in any measure the same modification 

 as the parent had acquired. If the sun-burnt parent had a 

 congenitally swarthy child, that might be an indication of 

 modification-transmission of the first degree of directness. It 

 might be an illustration of what has been so carefully searched 

 after — the transmission of a partiadar acquired character. We 

 cannot too strongly emphasise that this and nothing else is 

 what Weismann has denied ; this and nothing else is the crux 

 of " the interminable argument." And for the sake of argument, 

 the possibility (i) must be kept quite distinct from the possibilities 

 (2) and (3). 



(2) If the offspring exhibited a new character, not the same 

 as the parent's acquired modification, but affecting similar tissue, 

 though in a different fashion, we might be justified in speaking 

 of this as modification-transmission of the second degree of 

 directness. It might be an illustration, not of the inheritance 

 of a particular acquired character, but of something correlated 

 therewith, if the much sunburnt parent of a thoroughly blond 

 stock had a child with very dark hair on a very white skin. But 

 the inference would not be certain. 



(3) If the offspring exhibited a novel character, analogous to 

 a modification, yet neither similar to the modification acquired 

 by the parent nor affecting the same region of the body, it 

 might be said that we had to deal with modification-inheritance of 



