2SO 



THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. 



other mode of selection is needed to account for the presence of such 

 ornament." Granted, but does not the author see that if the origin of 

 characters so important as those often possessed by males is to be 

 ascribed to internal constitution rather than to external selection, the 

 origin of this, that, and the other set of characters will next be 

 explained in the same way, as the heretics are in fact now doing. In 

 pulling down the theory of sexual selection in favor of that of natural 

 selection, Mr. Wallace has really handed over Mr. Darwin's elaborate 

 outwork to the enemy, who will not fail to see its value for a new 

 assault. 



Before we conclude this necessary historical sketch, we must how- 

 ever refer to the subject of debate recently reopened by Weismann, to 

 whom, as one of the foremost of European naturalists, the reader's 

 attention has already been so frequently directed. To a very large 



Fig. 102. — Two adjacent animal cells, showing communications through adjacent 

 intercellular substance; also the protoplasmic network, and the 

 nucleus.— After Pfitzner. 



extent at least, we and our fathers have believed that characters 

 acquired by the individual organism from functional or environmental 

 conditions might be transmitted as a legacy to the offspring. Accord- 

 ing to Weismann, and not a few others independent of and dependent 

 on him, this has been a delusion. Not only is positive proof of such 

 transmission of acquired characters, that is, other than those of 

 constitutional, congenital, or germinal origin, so scanty and unsatis- 

 factory that His has not hesitated to call the catalogue of cases a mere 

 "handful of anecdotes," but the connection between the body-cells 

 and the sex-elements seems to Weismann and his school so far from 

 close or dependent, that there is a great probability against any 

 "somatic" dint or modification directly affecting the reproductive 



