IN THE THEOKY OF NATURAL SELECTION. 269 



The children of accomplished pianists do not inherit the art of 

 playing the piano ; they have to learn it in the same laborious 

 manner as that by which their parents acquired it ; they do not 

 inherit anything- except that which their parents also possessed 

 when children, viz. manual dexterity and a good ear. Furthermore, 

 language is not transmitted to our children, although it has been 

 practised not only by ourselves but by an almost endless line of 

 ancestors. Only recently, facts have again been worked up and 

 brought together, which show that children of highly civilized 

 nations have no trace of a language when they have grown up in 

 a wild condition and in complete isolatStm l . The power of speech 

 is an acquired or transient character : it is not inherited, and cannot 

 be transmitted : it disappears with the organism which manifests it. 

 Not only do similar phenomena occur in the vegetable kingdom, 

 but they present themselves in an especially striking manner. 



When Nageli 2 introduced Alpine plants, taken from their natural 

 habitat, into the botanical garden at Munich, many of the species 

 were so greatly altered that they could hardly be recognized : for 

 instance, the small Alpine hawk-weeds became large and thickly 

 branching, and they blossomed freely. But if such plants, or even 

 their descendants, were removed to a poor gravelly soil the new 

 characters entirely disappeared, and the plants were re-transformed 

 into the original Alpine form. The re-transformation was always 

 complete, even when the species had been cultivated in rich garden 

 soil for several generations. 



Similar experiments with identical results were made twenty 

 years ago by Alexis Jordan 3 , who chiefly made use of Draba verna 

 in his researches. These experiments furnish very strong proofs, 

 because they were originally undertaken without the bias which 

 may be given by a theory. Jordan only intended to decide experi- 

 mentally whether the numerous forms of the plant, as it occurs 

 wild in different habitats, are mere varieties or true species. He 

 found that the different forms do not. pass into one another, and 



1 Compare Rauber, ' Homo sapiens ferus oder die Zustande der Verwilderten.' 

 Leipzig, 1885. 



2 ' Sitzungsberichte der baierischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,' vom 18 Nov. 

 1865. Compare also his ' Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre,' 

 p. 102, etc. 



3 Jordan, ' Eemarques sur le fait de 1' existence en societe des especes vegetales 

 affines.' Lyon, 1873. 



