D $HAKATERS 17? 



ic one? In : 



modi; >f the body or sonia, arib. 



individual and itself in no way due tu In; 

 germ cells in such a way that the offspring developed from 

 them will exhibit a corresponding modification of its soma ? 



It is useless either to deny or to assert the possibility of. the 

 inheritance of such characters on any purely a priori grounds. 

 The fact that no satisfactory mechanism for the transference of 

 such characters from parent to offspring h yet been demon- 

 strated does not justify us in denying the possibility of such 

 transference. Our decision must depend upon an unbiassed 

 examination of the evidence which can be >rought forward on 

 each side. 



It is, of course, obvious that inasmuch as any organism differs 

 to a greater or less extent from its ancestors, the differences 

 being as a general rule greater in proportion to the remoteness 

 of the particular ancestor with which it is compared, the 

 differentiating characters must have been acquired, in "the 

 ordinary sense of the word during the interval which separates 

 the two generations in question. For example, there can be no' 

 reasonable doubt that birds are descended from ancestors which 

 were reptilian in character and had no featl ^eatherfl bive. 



unquestionably been acquired somehow or other during the pro- 

 gress of the bird's evolution. This, however, is not the sort of 

 acquisition the inheritance of which is in dispute. Weisman 

 his followers would deny altogether that feathers original 

 somatogenic characters ; they would say tin certain apparently 

 fortuitous modifications in the constitution of the germ c 

 themselves were responsible for the first app arance of feat! 

 probably in an extremely rudimentary form and that this, ne^ 

 character proving to be of value in the stru^ojt i <r existence 

 preserved and fostered by natural selection uu 

 process of Devolution the elaborate plumage oi as ting b 

 perfected. 



In striking qontrast to such a case as the above we 

 innumerable cases of the more or less sudden appearance 

 somatic characters during the life-time of an individual *., 

 obvious result of the action of some external or environn 

 influence, or of the use or disuse of some organ by its 

 and it is to such cases that Weismann and 

 rightly or wrongly, confine the discussion. 



B. N 



