248 Heredity and Environment 



They injected the pulped lenses of rabbits into fowls and, after 

 the fowls had become sensitized to this foreign protein by the 

 formation of anti-lens substances, their serum was injected into 

 pregnant female rabbits. The effects on the injected rabbits were 

 severe and many of them died, but there was no evidence that 

 their eyes or lenses suffered injury ; furthermore there was no 

 evidence of any specific injury to their ovarian eggs, since in sub- 

 sequent breeding they produced no young with eye defects. On 

 the other hand, some of the embryos in utero did suffer specific 

 injury ; some were born with opaque lenses ; sometimes their lenses 

 were reduced in size, and when the lens was small the whole eye 

 was usually small; sometimes the eyeball had collapsed leaving 

 no trace of pupil or iris; finally these degenerative changes fre- 

 quently increased and progressed after birth. 



All of these defects might be explained by the direct action of 

 the anti-lens substances of the fowl's serum upon the developing 

 eyes of the embryos, which would be merely another case of "in- 

 duction"; but the thing which cannot be explained so easily is 

 the fact that these eye defects are inherited for at least five 

 generations and that they do not gradually disappear but become 

 more pronounced in successive generations. Furthermore it is 

 not possible to assume that the lens anti-bodies are transmitted 

 only through the cytoplasm of the egg, as plastids are in plants or 

 fat-stains in animals, for the induced eye defects are inherited 

 through the male as well as through the female line. The authors 

 suggest the possibility "that the degenerating eyes are themselves 

 directly or indirectly originating anti-bodies or other chemical 

 substances in the blood-serum of their bearers which in turn affect 

 the germ cells." 



Whatever the mechanism of this inheritance may be it does 

 seem that in this case there is specific inheritance of an induced 

 injury, and it will no doubt give much comfort to those who believe 

 in the "inheritance of acquired characters." But, however these 

 results may be interpreted, it is evident that the old doctrine of the 



