32 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



practice of artificially compressing them had not been 

 practiced for centuries. But he does not tell us whether 

 he ever saw a Chinese young lady, or if he has made 

 any observations on the feet of Chinese young women." 

 Eimer has mentioned a number of cases of supposed 

 mutilation which I have not seen refuted. In arguing 

 for the inheritance of mutilations, he says:''^ " That 

 injuries, when continued for an extremely long time, 

 may be inherited is proved, to my mind, by atrophied 

 (rudimentary) organs. The degeneration of these organs 

 depends incontestably on disuse; in consequence of dis- 

 use the blood-supply is diminished, in consequence of 

 the decrease of nutrition degeneration takes place. If 

 we consider the course of gradual degeneration, e.g. of 

 the tail as it must have taken place in the higher mam- 

 mals, to have proceeded in this purely physiological 

 manner from the tip toward the root, the process is 

 much the same as if the tip of the tail had been in 

 many successive generations amputated, and the short- 

 ening had been inherited and then the shorter tail thus 

 acquired had been farther shortened artificially, and so 

 on. In any case, in the degeneration of the tail an 

 acquired character has been inherited by the offspring, 

 a character which, in the causes of its origin, is closely 

 similar to a perpetually repeated mutilation. Great 

 periods of time, however, have been necessary in this 

 case for the accomplishment of a final result." 



This example of Prof. Elmer's seems, however, to be 

 an assumption of the validity of the point in dispute. 

 His opponents could, of course, claim that the reduction 

 in the length of the tail was due solely to the selection 

 of the shortest. His examples of observed cases of in- 

 heritance of mutilations, however, do not appear to be 



* Organic Evolution, Eng. translation, p. 176. 



