2 24 TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



Chinese lady's foot. Under each category we shall notice merely 

 a few typical cases, which may be added to as the reader pleases by 

 referring to the literature cited, or by consulting the great work of 

 Delage. 



Amputations repeated Generation after Generation. — Circum- 

 cision among Jews and Mohammedans, docking horses, dogs, and 

 sheep, cutting off parts of the ears of dogs, dishorning cattle, are 

 cases in point, and there is no evidence of transmitted result. Dar- 

 win (1879) does indeed cite Riedel to the effect that a shortened 

 prepuce has been induced among the Mohammedans of Celebes, but 

 Delage notes the inconclusiveness of Riedel's observations. Haeckel 

 (1875) ^^^ Leidesdorff {Wien. med. Wochenschr. 1877) have also 

 stated that a rudimentary prepuce occurs more frequently in races 

 who practise circumcision, but other statistics do not bear this out. 

 As Ziegler says (1886, p. 27), "There is in this respect no difference 

 between Jews and Christians ; among the latter a defective develop- 

 ment of the prepuce is as frequent as among the former." See also 

 Roth, Correspondenz-Blatt f. Schweizer Aerzte, 1884. 



Weismann cut off the tails of mice for nineteen generations, Bos 

 for fifteen. Cope for eleven, Mantegazza and Rosenthal likewise, but 

 in no case was any inherited result observed. An American record 

 of the production of a tail-less race almost certainly illustrates an 

 unscientific use of the imagination. 



The tails of fox-terriers are often cut, and pups with short tails 

 are sometimes observed. The following case is representative of a 

 number of records. A fox-terrier, whose tail had been cut, had four 

 pups, one with a full-length tail, one with a rather short tail, and 

 two with quite short tails. But the short tails had the usual tapering 

 vertebrae (D. E. Hutchins, Nature, Ixx., 1904, p. 6). 



Delage cites Tietz (1889) to the effect that kittens with an atrophied 

 tail are frequent in the Eiffel, where the peasants habitually curtail 

 their cats — in mistaken kindness, for they believe that there is a 

 worm at the root of the tail which keeps them from catching mice ! 

 If abortive tails are unusually common in that district, the fact is of 

 much interest, and Delage does not find sufficient explanation in the 

 suggestion of Dingfelder (1887), that, as the peasants leave short- 

 tailed kittens alone, an inborn variation towards short tails has 

 been allowed to diffuse itself. It is, of course, easy to appeal to an 

 innate tendency to shortening of the tail, but it is curious that the 

 examples should be found so generally among domesticated animals. 



