74 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



amination of these specimens proved an enter- 

 taining diversion from the regular proceed- 

 ings, and Prof. Eimer took them seriously 

 enough to refer to them in a later work as "a 

 valuable instance of the transmission of mu- 

 tilations." 



Weismann, however, refused to be put 

 down. He insisted that in the absence of ab- 

 solute certainty as to the cart wheel incident, 

 they did not fulfill the first condition of scien- 

 tific evidence, and Dr. Zacharias wisely ad- 

 mitted later, that this point was well taken. 

 Prof. Poulton had described certain cats with 

 extra toes which he had kept under surveil- 

 lance for seven generations. "It would be 

 equally justifiable," says Weismann. "to de- 

 rive cats with extra toes from an ancestor 

 whose toes had been trodden on, as to derive 

 the tailless cats of the Isle of Man from an 

 ancestor of which the tail had been cut off 

 by a cart passing over it, and thus to regard 

 the existence of the race as a proof of the 

 transmission of mutilations." 



Again Weismann points out that the ab- 

 sence of a tail may not be owing to the muti- 

 lation of the mother but to the inherent tail- 

 lessness of an unknown father. He proceeds 

 to relate how during the year that Dr. Zacha- 

 rias came with his collection, "My friend. Prof. 



