OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS 225 



Babylon also represent camels with humps smaller 

 than those of the modern animals. An observation of 

 the same order, cited by Cattaneo, was reported by 

 Fogliata. A female ass, which had long been used 

 as a pack animal, presented on her back a large adi- 

 pose protuberance corresponding to the area covered 

 by a pack saddle and due to the pressure of the saddle. 

 That female mated with a normal male and bore a 

 young which presented exactly the same peculiarity. 10 

 However striking these isolated cases may be, they are 

 not as convincing as the observations of a more general 

 character we cited above, for they may have been due 

 to a mere coincidence. 



Many of those cases are proof against the usual ob- 

 jections raised by the strict Anti-Lamarckians. They 

 cannot be explained by direct infection through the 

 germ, nor by possible transmission of a chemical sub- 

 stance from parent to offspring, nor by simultaneous 

 action of an external factor on germ and soma. The 

 characters involved are purely somatic, strictly local- 

 ised, and due to influences which cannot bear upon the 

 organs of reproduction. Examples of this kind 

 prove that certain acquired characters can be trans- 

 mitted. 



Among other characters acquired through use, we 



10 G. Cattaxeo. Le gobbe e le callositd dei cammelli in rapporto colla 

 qwstione dell'ereditarieta dei carratteri acquisiti. (Rend. 1st. Lom- 

 bardo, XXIX, 1896.) 



