HEREDITY OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 187 



attention to the fact that in all the cabbage tribe the acquired 

 characters are secured before the flowers are developed. 



I have no right to call upon a Darwinian who does not 

 believe m the heredity of acquired characters to "prove a 

 negative". It therefore is incumbent upon me to show, as 

 I have done above, on what grounds I most undoubtedly hold 

 to the view which Darwin maintained ; so I will now state the 

 position of a Darwinian as given to me by letter. 



He says : " What is really in question is the power of the 

 individual to transmit to its descendants, not the tendency to 

 modification, but the actual modifications themselves ". 



It is easy to see how this difficulty arises in the mind of 

 a Darwinian, for since any character which happens to have 

 appeared was a favourable one and preserved by Natural Selec- 

 tion, he has nothing to account for its appearance nor why 

 it may not be a fluctuating and transient " individual differ- 

 ence," or why it should reappear, especially if the conditions 

 of life be changed. 



On the other hand, according to the law of self-adaptation 

 to the environment, it is totally otherwise. 



To my correspondent's observations I would remark that 

 the transmission of the " tendency" is only recognised by the 

 reappearance of the acquired character, and the parent has 

 no other means of imparting the "modifications themselves" 

 than by giving its offspring the "tendency" and power to 

 reproduce them. 



But this is hardly a correct way of stating the case. It is 

 not so much an inherited as an inherent tendency to respond 

 to the environment ; but having done so in one generation the 

 next has an increased power of response, since it not only 

 reproduces the amount acquired by its parent but adds to it. 



Let us consider what really takes place. All organisms 

 arise from ova. When the egg is discharged or laid by the 

 parent, as in all oviparous creatures, or when the seeds and 

 spores are shed in the vegetable kingdom, they are no longer 

 under the influence of the parent. How, then, can any " actual 



