INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 87 



When Weismann began to sift the evidence for 

 the inheritance of acquired characters, he found tliat 

 it was largely based upon opinion rather than fact, 

 much like the popular belief with regard to prenatal 

 influences and birthmarks, or the causation of warts 

 by handling toads. 



The supposed evidence for the inheritance of ac- 

 quired characters falls chiefly into four categories : — 



a. Mutilations ; 



h. Environmental effects; 



c. The effects of use or disuse ; 



d. The transmission of disease. 



a. Mutilations 



It is fortunate that the sons of warriors do not 

 inherit their fathers' honorable scars of battle, else 

 we would now be a race of cripples. 



The feet of Chinese women of certain classes have 

 for centuries been mutilated into deformity by band- 

 aging, without the mutilation in any way becoming 

 an inherited character. The same result is also 

 true of circumcision, a mutilation practised from 

 ancient times by the Jews and certain other Eastern 

 peoples. The progressive degeneration or crippling 

 of the little toe in man has been explained as the 

 inheritance of the cramping effect of shoes upon 

 generations of shoe wearers, but, as Wiedersheim 

 has pointed out, the fact that Egyptian mummies 

 show the same crippling of the little toe is unfavorable 

 to this hypothesis, for no ancient Egyptian could 



