446 THE SUPPOSED TRANSMISSION OF MUTILATIONS. 



pressions of the mother, is a supposition which cannot be admitted ; 

 but also and chiefly because a single coincidence of an idea of the 

 mother with an abnormality in the child does not form the proof 

 of a causal connexion between the two phenomena. 



I do not doubt that among 1 the many thousands of present and 

 past students in German Universities, whose faces are covered with 

 scars, there may be one with a son who exhibits a birth-mark on 

 the spot where the father possesses a scar. All sorts of birth-marks 

 occur, and why should they not sometimes have the appearance of 

 a scar? Such a case, if it occurred, would be acceptable to the 

 adherents of the theory of the transmission of acquired characters ; 

 it would in their opinion completely upset the views of their op- 

 ponents. 



But how could such a case, if it were really established, be 

 capable of proving the supposed form of hereditary transmission, 

 any more than von Baer's case could prove the theory of the 

 efficacy of ' maternal impressions ' ? 



I am of opinion that the extraordinary rarity of such cases 

 strongly enforces the fact that we have to do with an accidental 

 and not a causal coincidence. If scars could be really transmitted, 

 we should expect very frequently to find birth-marks which cor- 

 respond to scars upon the face of the father, viz. in almost all 

 cases in which the son had inherited the type of face possessed by 

 the father. If this were so we should have to be seriously con- 

 cerned about the beauty of the next generation in Germany, as so 

 many of our undergraduates follow the fashion of decorating their 

 faces with as many of these ' honourable scars ' as possible. 



I have spoken of' maternal impressions' because I wished to show 

 that, until quite recently, distinguished and acute scientific men 

 have adhered to an idea, and believed that they possessed the proof 

 of an idea, which has now been completely and for ever abandoned 

 by science. But in addition to this, there is a very close con- 

 nexion between the theory of the efficacy of maternal impressions 

 and that of the transmission of acquired characters, and sometimes 

 they are even confounded together. 



Last year a popular scientific journal quoted the following 

 as a proof of the transmission of mutilations. I do not, howevrr, 

 wish to imply that the editor must be held responsible for the 

 errors of a correspondent. ' In November, T 864, a pregnant merino 



