V / 



28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



There remains only to notice the third conceivable mode of 

 adjustment. It may be imagined that though, by the natural 

 selection of miscellaneous variations, these adjustments can not 

 be effected, they may nevertheless be made to take place appro- 

 priately. How made ? To suppose them so made is to suppose 

 that the prescribed end is somewhere recognized ; and that the 

 changes are step by step simultaneously proportioned for achiev- 

 ing it is to suppose a designed production of these changes. In 

 such case, then, we have to fall back in part upon the primi- 

 tive hypothesis ; and if we do this in part, we may as well do it 

 wholly may as well avowedly return to the doctrine of special 

 creation. 



What, then, is the only defensible interpretation ? If such 

 modifications of structure produced by modifications of function 

 as we see take place in each individual, are in any measure trans- 

 missible to descendants, then all these co-adaptations, from the 

 simplest up to the most complex, are accounted for. In some 

 cases this inheritance of acquired characters suffices by itself to 

 explain the facts ; and in other cases it suffices when taken in com- 

 bination with the selection of favorable variations. An example 

 of the first class is furnished by the change just considered ; and 

 an example of the second class is furnished by the case before 

 named of development in a deer's horns. If, by some extra mass- 

 iveness spontaneously arising, or by formation of an additional 

 " point," an advantage is gained either for attack or defense, then, 

 if the increased muscularity and strengthened structure of the 

 neck and thorax, which wielding of these somewhat heavier horns 

 produces, are in a greater or less degree inherited, and in several 

 successive generations, are by this process brought up to the re- 

 quired extra strength, it becomes possible and advantageous for a 

 further increase of the horns to take place, and a further increase 

 in the apparatus for wielding them, and so on continuously. By 

 such processes only, in which each part gains strength in propor- 

 tion to function, can co-operative parts be kept in adjustment, 

 and be readjusted to meet new requirements. Close contempla- 

 tion of the facts impresses me more strongly than ever with the 

 two alternatives either there has been inheritance of acquired 

 characters, or there has been no evolution. Contemporary Review. 



[To be concluded.'] 



IN his work on Burma and Farther India, General A. It. MacMahon, ex- 

 Political Resident, expresses the opinion that the caste restriction on social inter- 

 course, the absence of which in Burma gives occasion for much pleasant inti- 

 macy with Europeans, has preserved the natives of India from many evils the 

 result of a too sudden introduction to European ways and habits to which the 

 Burmese succumb. 



