I02 Elliot, Inkcritance oj Aajuired Characters. [Januaiy 



insects, some on reptiles ; the divergent habits of the Ring Ouzel 

 and the Water Ouzel ; and the peculiar habits of blood sacking 

 bats ; — when I see these and a thousand other modifications and 

 divergences of habit, I question whether the theor3' that they 

 have all arisen through the elimination of those forms which 

 failed to possess them may not be pushed too far; I am inclined 

 to believe that the inheritance of acquired modifications has been 

 a cooperating factor. It is not enough to say that these habits 

 are all useful to their possessors. It has to be shoivtz that they 

 are of elimination value — that their possession or non-posses- 

 sion has made all the difference between survival and elimin- 

 ation." 



Other branches of zoology also aflbrd striking evidences of 

 this transmission difficult to explain away. Moritz Wagner has 

 shown that a species of Satiirnia^ transferred from Texas to Switz- 

 erland acquired new characters and transmitted them to its off- 

 spring of the first generation. A number of pupai were brought 

 over, and the moths developed out of the coccoons exactly resem- 

 bled the Texan species. Their young were fed on leaves of 

 yugla7ts 7'egia, and the moths were different, both in form and 

 color, and were considered by entomologists as a distinct species. 

 The polymorphic snail Helix nemoralis^ was introduced from 

 Europe into Lexington, Virginia, a few years ago. Under its 

 new conditions it varied to a greater extent than it had been 

 known to do elsewhere, and one hundred and twenty-five 

 varieties have been observed, of which no less than sixty^-seven 

 are new or unknown in Europe, its native country.* 



The shrimp Artemia salina lives in brackish water, and the 

 A. milhausenii in water much salter. By altering gradually the 

 saltness of the water, either of them can be transformed into 

 the other in the course of a few generations, and the change of 

 form is maintained, the altered conditions remaining the same.f 



Vertebrate paleontology furnishes evidences that acquired char- 

 acters are transmitted, and that the majorit}'^ of these occur alone 

 from use and disuse, and Weismann argues that these variations 

 are quantitative, and are acted upon by natural selection. But 

 in tooth evolution, as pointed out by Prof. Osborne,}: there arc ex- 



*CockerelI, Nature, Feb. 27. 1890. 



tLloyd Morgan, after Schmankevvitsch, Anim. Life and Intell. p. 164. 



JAm. Nat. 1891, p. i6. ; ibid. Nature, XLI, 1890, p. 227. 



