ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 77 



are mammals which pass through an extended uterine 

 existence, so that it is easy to see how the offspring 

 in this case were subjected to the same excessive tern- 

 perature as the parents for a period sufficient to amply 

 account for their subsequent variation when removed 

 to a normal environment. 



Zederbaur finds that the wayside weed Capsella, 

 which in the course of many years has gradually crept 

 along the roadsides up into an Alpine habitat and 

 there "acquired" Alpine characters, upon being trans- 

 planted to the lowlands retains its Alpine modifications. 

 Although this case has been cited as an authentic in- 

 stance of the inheritance of acquired characters, is it 

 not possible that the conquest of the Alps by CapseUa 

 has been due, in the course of time, not to the inherit- 

 ance of acquired characters at all, but to a gradual 

 natural selection of just those germinal variations 

 which best fitted it to cope with Alpine conditions 

 until, finally, a strain of germplasm producing somato- 

 plasm suitable to Alpine conditions has been isolated 

 in the form of an elementary species derived from the 

 original type? If this is what has happened, of course 

 such germplasm would give rise to Alpine plants 

 whether individual plants grew to maturity near the 

 snow-line or in the warm valleys at a lower altitude. 



Kammerer, by reducing the water supply, succeeded 

 in transforming Salamandra maeulosa, a salamander 

 normally producing about seventy eggs which, when 

 hatched in water, become gill-breathing tadpoles, into 

 a salamander producing only two to seven young 

 which are born alive without gills and are able to live 



