HEREDITY. 83 
erations women have bored their ears and noses in India. 
Yet when is a girl born with ears and nose already 
pierced? For how many generations have we amputated 
the tails of terriers, and yet their tails are no shorter. 
It will then be perceived how overwhelming is the case 
against the doctrine of the transmission of acquirements. 
“The general question of the transmission of acquire- 
ments is too big and too abstruse to be treated adequately 
here. Two arguments more I may use, however, partly 
because they have not been developed, to my knowledge, 
by other writers, and partly because they seem to me well- 
nigh decisive. The more than normal development of the 
blacksmith’s arm is rightfully called an acquired trait, 
since it arises from exercise, from use, not from germinal 
conditions. But no infant’s arm develops into an ordi- 
nary adult arm without exercise similar in kind to that 
which develops the blacksmith’s arm, though less in de- 
gree. 
“Every single thing contained within the memory of 
man, every single word of a language, for instance, is 
an acquirement. But when are the contents of a parent’s 
mind transmitted to the child? 
‘Again, a man is capable of becoming a parent at 
any time between extreme youth and extreme old age; a 
woman from the age of thirteen to fourteen till nearly 
fifty. Between the birth of the first child and the last 
such an individual changes vastly. Under stress and 
fear of circumstances, under the slings and arrows of 
outrageous fortune, all sorts of acquirements are made. 
The body becomes vigorous and then feeble, the mind 
grows mature, and then senile. He or she grows 
wrinkled and bowed and perhaps very wise, or perhaps 
much the reverse. Yet no one viewing a baby show, a 
children’s party, or an assembly of adults, of whom he 
