78 GENETICS 



color of a shield, one maintaining that it was red, 

 the other that it was black. So they hacked away 

 at each other, as all good knights should do in the 

 defense of the truth, until they both fell down dead 

 beside the shield which was black on one side and 

 red on the other. 



Of course actual characters are never inherited, but 

 only the determiners or potentialities which regulate 

 the way in which the organism reacts to its environ- 

 ment or training with respect to the characters in 

 question. Reid has pointed out that in one sense 

 every adult character is "acquired" because it has 

 no expression at first. For instance, there is no 

 beard on the face of a male infant, but it will presum- 

 ably be "acquired" later on in the life-cycle. 



It is plain that every new character which repre- 

 sents a forward evolutionary step must have been 

 "acquired," or added, sometime and somewhere, else 

 it would not be present, as there is evidence that it is. 

 Perhaps the question, as Montgomery has suggested, 

 ought to be changed to read : " What kinds of acquired 

 characters are inherited.^" It is obvious that dis- 

 cussion is futile until a common denominator in the 

 shape of a definition of acquired characters shall be 

 accepted. 



6. Weismann's Conception of Acquired 



Characters 



Weismann defines an acquired character as any 

 somatic modification that does not have its origin in the 

 germplasm. 



