(5) 
suggest a change—and I think a desirable change—in the 
statement of the problem. For the question, “ Are acquired 
characters hereditary?” it would be more accurate to sub- 
stitute ‘‘Can the acquired characters of the parent be handed 
down as inherent characters in the offspring ?” 
It is in no way necessary that the acquired elements of a 
character should be disentangled from the inherent elements, 
so that we can prove the character as a whole to be dependent 
upon a controllable external cause, and therefore itself con- 
trollable. In fact we speak of a character as “acquired” just 
as we speak of an article as “manufactured,” although the 
result itself is a complex of the properties of natural 
substances and of changes introduced by art.* 
Lamarck’s Second Law a contradiction of his First Law.— 
Before leaving these general introductory considerations 
and proceeding to weigh the evidence offered by the insect 
world, it is of importance to demonstrate that there is an in- 
consistency in the teaching of Lamarck and his followers 
which, startling as it is, was never noticed until pointed out 
by Professor E. R. Lankester in 1894.7 
“ Normal conditions of environment have for many thou- 
sands of generations moulded the individuals of a given species 
of organism, and determined as each individual developed and 
grew ‘responsive’ quantities in its parts (characters) ; yet, as 
Lamarck tells us, and as we know, there is in every individual 
born a potentiality which has not been extinguished. Change 
the normal conditions of the species in the case of a young 
individual taken to-day from the site where for thousands of 
generations its ancestors have responded in a perfectly defined 
way to the normal and defined conditions of environment ; 
reduce the daily or the seasonal amount of solar radiation to 
which the individual is exposed; or remove the aqueous 
vapour from the atmosphere ; or alter the chemical composi- 
tion of the pabulum accessible; or force the individual to 
previously unaccustomed muscular effort or to new pressures 
* For an interesting discussion on the relation between ‘‘ acquired ” 
and ‘‘ genetic” characters see Adam Sedgwick’s Presidential Address to 
Section D of the British Association at Dover (Report 1899, pp. 759-766). 
t “‘ Nature,” vol. li, 1894, p. 102. 
