HEREDITY 93 



musical talent than, given equal opportunity, will those 

 of the man reared under conditions which prevented' him 

 from ever exercising his talent. 



A good deal of confusion exists in the unscientific mind 

 in regard to the question of the " inheritance of acquired 

 characters " owing to want of analysis of cause and effect. 

 It is true, of course, that musical talent runs in families, 

 but it must be remembered that a man chooses the 

 profession of music because he has the innate capacity 

 for music, and it is this innate capacity which is inherited, 

 not his acquired musical attainments. 



We must be careful, however, not to leave the im- 

 pression that all biologists are agreed that the effects of 

 environment on the body of the parent can never be 

 registered in the germ-plasm in such a way as to be repro- 

 duced in the offspring. There are certain cases which 

 are still under consideration by biologists. It is also 

 of course true that acquisitions by the parent may affect 

 the offspring in other ways, e.g. by the direct transfer- 

 ence of disease-producing organisms to the embryo, as in 

 syphilis. Here, however, we are not dealing with inherit- 

 ance in the biological sense of the word. We may take 

 it that one runs no practical danger in assuming that 

 any particular acquisition will not be inherited. 



The possibility of predicting the characteristics of the 

 offspring from those of the parents depends therefore 

 largely upon how truly the latter disclose the nature of 

 the germ- plasm from which they themselves have sprung. 

 Another important requirement is to know what com- 

 bination will result when two diverse germ-plasms meet. 

 The greatest advance ever yet made in our understanding 

 of both these points was the discovery made by a 



