ACQUIRED CHARACTERS. 39 



how they are to be accounted for otherwise than by 

 hereditary transmission I am at a loss to understand. 



Under changed conditions a plant, an animal, or a 

 man will change. There must be harmony. Nature 

 will not long tolerate a discord. The creature must 

 maintain the equilibrium between himself and his 

 surroundings somehow, or cease to exist, and he can 

 only do this in one of two ways, either he must suit 

 himself to his surroundings, or so modify his surround- 

 ings that they may suit him. This latter man fre- 

 quently attempts, but he can at best only partially 

 carry it out, and so to regain the equilibrium he must 

 himself change. Examples of this abound. It is seen 

 when a people are transferred from one climate or 

 part of the globe to another. In such cases changes 

 are very soon brought about in the people, and they 

 develop characters which were not present before their 

 translation. At first these recently acquired characters 

 are not at all firmly fixed, and there is great liability 

 in the offspring to reversion toward the original family 

 type, but with each generation the new characters be- 

 come more deeply marked, more intimately ingrained 

 in the organism, and the liability to reversion being 

 gradually lessened, the new characters become fixed 

 and constant in the family. We have a good example 

 of this in the Yankee, for, as Sir William Turner 

 says, "Most of us can distinguish the nationality of 

 a citizen of the United States by his personal appear- 

 ance, without being under the necessity of waiting to 

 hear his speech and intonation." 



