Essays on Life 



grew crooked, and his sons had the same 

 finger on the same hand similarly crooked. 

 A soldier, fifteen years before his marriage, lost 

 his left eye from purulent ophthalmia, and 

 his two sons were microphthalmic on the 

 same side." 



The late Professor Rolleston, whose com- 

 petence as an observer no one is likely to 

 dispute, gave Mr, Darwin two cases as having 

 fallen under his own notice, one of a man 

 whose knee had been severely wounded, and 

 whose child was born with the same spot 

 marked or scarred, and the other of one who 

 was severely cut upon the cheek, and whose 

 child was born scarred in the same place. 

 Mr. Darwin's conclusion was that " the effects 

 of injuries, especially when followed by disease, 

 or perhaps exclusively when thus followed, are 

 occasionally inherited." 



Let us now see what Professor Weismann 

 has to say against this. He writes : 



" The only cases worthy of discussion are 

 the well-known experiments upon guinea-pigs 

 conducted by the French physiologist, Brown- 



Sequard. But the explanation of his results 



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