THE SHASTA DAISY 



origin that lead the botanist to classify them in 

 the same genus. But, on the other hand, these 

 races show difl'erences of detail as to stem and 

 leaf and flower and habit which entitle them to 

 rank as different species. 



As the likenesses between the different daisies 

 are the tokens of their remote common origin and 

 evidences of the power of heredity, so their 

 specific differences betoken the influences of the 

 different environment in which they have lived 

 since they took divergent courses. 



The Japanese daisy is different from the Ger- 

 man daisy because the sum total of environmental 

 influences to which it has been subjected in the 

 past few thousand years is different from the sum 

 total of influences to which the German daisy has 

 been subjected. Not merely differences due to 

 the soil and climate of Japan and Germany 

 today, but cumulative differences due to ancestral 

 environments all along the line of the migration 

 that led one branch of the race of daisies eastward 

 across Asia and the other branch westward across 

 Europe. 



Are Acquired Traits Transmitted? 



But all this implies that the imprint of the 

 successive environments was in each case an 

 influence transmitted to the offspring; and this is 

 precisely what I mean to imply. 



[29] 



