438 SUPPOSED TRANSMISSION OF MUTILATIONS. [VIII. 



We will now consider in greater detail the facts which have 

 hitherto been brought forward upon this point. It is not my 

 purpose to discuss every single case which has been mentioned 

 anywhere or by anybody; such a discussion would hardly lead 

 to any result. I propose to select a small number of such 

 instances, in order to show why they cannot be maintained as 

 proofs. I shall chiefly deal with cases which have been 

 brought forward as especially strong proofs by my opponents, 

 and which have been carefully and completely examined. I 

 shall attempt to show that these are not conclusive and that 

 they must be explained in an entirely different manner. The 

 insufficiency of the proof does not always depend upon the 

 same circumstances, and, according to the latter, we may dis- 

 tinguish different classes of cases. 



First of all we may briefly mention those instances in which 

 the necessary precautions have not been taken before drawing 

 conclusions. 



To this class belong the tailless cats which were shown at 

 last year's (1887) Meeting of the Association of German 

 Naturalists, at Wiesbaden. These cats had inherited their 

 taillessness, or rather their rudimentary tails, from the mother 

 cat, which 'was said' to have lost her tail by the wheel of a 

 cart having passed over it. Not only did the owner of the 

 cats. Dr. Zacharias, consider them as a proof of the trans- 

 mission of mutilations, but in a recently-published work, entitled 

 ' On the Origin of Species, based upon the Transmission of 

 acquired characters ' (' Ueber die Entstehung der Arten auf 

 Grundlage des Vererbens erworbener Eigenschaften '), the 

 author. Prof. Eimer, speaks of these cats in the preface as a 

 'valuable' instance of the transmission of mutilations : these 

 examples therefore form part of the foundation upon which the 

 author builds up his theoretical views. 



Certainly, the want of tails in young cats, of which the 

 mother had lost its tail by an accident, would have been well 

 worth consideration, but unfortunately there is no trustworthy 

 record as to how the mother cat became tailless. Without 

 absolute certainty upon this point the evidence becomes utterly 

 worthless ; and Dr. Zacharias has acted very wisely in after- 

 wards admitting that this is the case, for inherent taillessness 

 has been known in cats for a long time. The tailless race of 



