q^ Elliot, In/ieritance of Acquired Charactcn. [January 



action of direct adaptation, in the second the results of the cessa- 

 tion of this action, A third class of acquired characters is to be 

 traced simply to the immediate action of the environment on the 

 oro-anism, and originally, at the commencement of their appear- 

 ance, all characters must have belonged to this class." 



Let us now consider other characters that are transmitted. 

 Myopia is a deterioration of the powers of the eye, and this has 

 become so prevalent in certain portions of Europe as to be almost 

 a national characteristic. That its eflects are and have been 

 transmitted from parent to offspring is undeniable. Natural 

 selection can have had nothing to do with it, otherwise this 

 would be to assert that this principle, in this instance at least, 

 had transmitted a character having an injurious effect, and thus 

 enabling its possessor to be less fitted for the struggle for life, or 

 exactly tlie opposite of the theory of the survival of the fittest. 

 Weismann attempts* to meet the difficulty of this evident 

 transmission of this acquired character by attributing it to an 

 "accidental disposition on the part of the germ, instead of to the 

 transmission of acquired short-sightedness," or to the "greater va- 

 riability of the eye, which necessarily results from the cessation of 

 the controlling influence of natural selection," or panmixia. Or, 

 in other words, that some progenitor of these myopic-inflicted 

 generations may have had a congenital disposition to myopia, and 

 have developed weak sight from an original predisposition which 

 he naturally transmitted, not as an acquired character. And 

 again, eyesight in a European, unlike that of a savage, is no 

 lon^j-er under the preserving influence of natural selection, and the 

 European, therefore, to make up for this deficiency and render 

 himself the equal of any, uses spectacles. On this explanation 

 Prof. Osborn well remarksf that "the latter example shows how 

 Weismann's followers are put on the defensive when they try to 

 explain the introduction of a new character without the La- 

 marckian principle, and solely by ingenious application of the Dar- 

 winian principle." Another instance of transmission of acquired 

 characters, though perhaps old and often referred to, is that of a 

 puppy, the offspring of parents trained to hunt birds, which, 

 though unti'ained itself and never having seen other individuals 

 of its species at work in the fields, suddenly stops and, without 



*Essays, 2d ed., pp. 90,91. 

 fAtlantic Monthly, 1891, p. 360. 



