ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 65 



to their several niches in nature be explained save by 

 seeing in it the final results of generations of gradu- 

 ally inherited adaptations? 



Darwin also believed in the inheritance of acquired 

 characters, although he differed from Lamarck with 

 respect to how such characters are acquired. 



Francis Galton in 1875 was one of the first to ex- 

 press skepticism regarding this generally accepted 

 belief, but the man who, in a masterly manner, focused 

 the growing doubt, and who did more than any other 

 to inspire thought and investigation upon the subject, 

 was August Weismann, who conspicuously bore the 

 torch of genetics between 1880 and 1890. Weismann 

 made the issue so clear that the heritability of acquired 

 characters became the parting of the ways which 

 divided biologists into the two camps of Neo-Lamarck- 

 ians who affirm, and Neo-Danmnians who deny, such 

 inheritance. His conclusions, which are the natural 

 outgrowth of the theory of the "continuity of the 

 germplasm," were based, however, upon logical rather 

 than upon experimental grounds. 



Comparative anatomists and paleontologists, who 

 are accustomed to work from results back to their 

 causes, are frequently inclined to look favorably upon 

 the inheritance of acquired characters while, on the 

 other hand, geneticists and embryologists, representing 

 the two lines of study which furnish the most imme- 

 diate approach to this problem, are well-nigh agreed 

 that acquired characters are not inherited. Experi- 

 ment from cause to result is undoubtedly the best cri- 

 terion for if the question could be decided by a vote 



