442 Eimer on Growth and Inheritance 



' Three frogs ' (he tells ^ us) * approximately similar in colour, were 

 placed in three vessels, of which the first stood on a black, the second 

 on a green, and the third on a white surface, being surrounded to the 

 height of some five centimetres with the same colour. 



* After about an hour and a half, the frog a on the black surface 

 was the darkest, h on the white the lightest, while the frog c sur- 

 rounded by green was intermediate in colour between the two. 

 Hereupon the frog a was transferred to the glass on the white, frog h 

 into the one on the black surface. After three-quarters of an hour 

 they were again examined, and a was the lightest, h the darkest. 

 Then c and h were interchanged, and in a quarter of an hour c was 

 the darkest, while h was intermediate in colour between c and a. 

 When, finally, h and a were interchanged, a change of colouring ap- 

 peared immediately; h became light again, and a took the inter- 

 mediate tint between h and c' 



With regard to the inheritance of injuries, the work sup- 

 plies us with some vakiable facts. In the first place its 

 translator severely criticises what he regards as a great 

 misrepresentation made by Professor Weismann of a case 

 adduced by Dr. Emil Schmidt, and regarded by the latter as 

 a plain instance of the inheritance by a son of a malforma- 

 tion in the ear, due to his mother having had her earring 

 accidently torn out when a child.^ But Dr. Meissan, of 

 Falkenberg, has recorded ^ the following case of injury in his 

 own family : — 



* When I was seven or eight years old I had the chicken-pox, and 

 I recollect with complete distinctness that I scratched one of the 

 pustules on the right temple, in consequence of which I had a small 

 white scar on this spot. Exactly the same scar, which I had of 

 course ceased to think of, on exactly the same spot, was present on 

 my little son, now fifteen months old, when he came into the world. 

 The resemblance is so perfect that it surprises every one who sees the 

 little mark.' 



Dr. Eimer's assistant, Dr. Yosseler, relates that his mother 

 in her eighteenth year injured the ring finger of her right 

 hand by squeezing it between the door latch and the door, 



1 P. 148. " Pp. viii to X. ^ j^ ^^g number of Humboldt for June 1887. 



