176 Inheritance of Acquired Characters 



useless attempts the pike finally gave up any attempt 

 to catch this unseizable prey and he persisted in this atti- 

 tude even after the glass had been removed. Now Galton 

 advises repeating this same experiment on several genera- 

 tions of pikes, taking care that each generation should 

 always be brought up apart from the preceding to prevent 

 any possibility of the educative influence of imitation, 

 and seeing if one would finally obtain any descendant 

 in which the instinct to throw himself upon the gudgeons 

 would be replaced by the contrary instinct of indifference 

 toward them. 138 



We should remark in this connection that because 

 one is here concerned with establishing the transmission 

 of an acquired instinct that is opposed to the inborn 

 instinct, experiments of this nature are less advisable 

 than those which seek rather to verify the inheritance 

 of a simple quantitative increase acquired by already 

 existing organs or tendencies. In Galton's experiment 

 the tendency of the descendants to produce the new in- 

 stinct even if it were present through a long series of 

 generations, might not possess sufficient potential energy 

 to enable it to manifest itself through activation because 

 it would have to overcome a pre-existing tendency which 

 in the beginning at any rate is certainly furnished with 

 a greater quantity of potential energy. Therefore it is 

 probable that it would be necessary to submit a very long 

 series of generations to this experiment of the glass par- 

 tition before the new tendency would be able to attain 

 a superiority over the former and to replace it. The 

 first pike upon which Mobius made his experiment 



138 Galton : Feasible Experiments on the Possibility of transmit- 

 ting acquired Habits by Means of Inheritance. Paper read at the 

 British Association. Nature, October 17, 1889. P. 610. 



