76 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
Lectures on ‘ Evolution and Heredity ’ at Gresham College, the same idea 
was expressed in an answer written by one of the students. I was very 
fortunate in my audience, which included Prof. A. G. Tansley, F.R.S., 
Wilfrid Mark Webb, and W. Platt Ball.4 The last-named student, in one 
of his answers, wrote to the following effect, if I may trust a memory of 
over forty years— Acquired characters are due to external causes acting 
upon inherent potentialities; inherent characters are due to inherent 
potentialities acted upon by external causes.’ The distinction, which 
seems at first sight difficult and confusing, is very clearly shown by 
a simple diagram given by Prof. Goodrich,’ who considers that the 
expression ‘ acquired character’ should be dropped. Its history is, how- 
ever, so interesting—Erasmus Darwin (1794), Lamarck (1809), Prichard 
(1813)—and its use still so general that we may hope for its continuance, 
considering especially the vital importance in everyday life of the facts 
which it describes. It is difficult to imagine Johannsen’s term— 
‘ phenotype ’—replacing it in discussing the problems of education or crime. 
In mentioning the name of the illustrious anthropologist, James 
Cowles Prichard, I may remind the Section that the non-transmission of 
acquired characters was maintained by him in the second edition (1826) 
of his great work, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind.* 1 
have recently studied the first edition (1813) and find that the same con- 
clusion was affirmed at this earlier date. Thus, on page 195, the author 
states, “ the changes produced by external causes in the appearance or 
constitution of the individual, are temporary, and in general acquired 
characters are transient and have no influence on the progeny.’ Again, 
on page 232, arguing that age-long exposure to heat did not cause the 
dark colour of tropical races, he continues ‘ and this fact is only an instance 
of the prevalence of the general law, which has ordained that the offspring 
shall always be constructed according to the natural and primitive con- 
stitution of the parents and therefore shall inherit only their connate 
peculiarities and not any of their acquired qualities "—a very remarkable 
statement to find in a book published eighteen years before the first meeting 
of the British Association. I must also mention on this occasion the 
paper’ contributed to the second meeting at Oxford in 1832, in which 
Prichard contends, in opposition to Cuvier, ‘that the various tribes of 
men are of one origin.’ 
The rediscovery of Mendel’s work—epoch-making although the birth 
of the epoch was long delayed—produced an immense effect on the 
papers and discussions in this Section. Much of the controversy in the 
first and second decades of this century arose out of the belief that only 
large variations—or as they were called, ‘ mutations,’ using an old word 
4 Author of ‘The Effect of Use and Disuse.’ ‘ Nature Series,’ London. The 
excellent term ‘ Use-inheritance ’ to signify ‘ the direct inheritance of the effects of 
use and disuse in kind,’ was suggested in this book. 
5 [bid., p. 54. See also p. 62, n. 1. 
8 Science Progress, April 1897. Reprinted in Essays on Evolution, Oxford 1908. 
7 * Abstract of a Comparative Review of Philological and Physical Researches 
as applied to the History of the Human Species.’ The abstract occupies fifteen pages 
. of B.A. Reports, vol. i. (including the first two meetings). 
