896 
ing the length of the wings W in Fig. 2. 
The proper length is found experimentally 
close to the transmitter. It is practically 
impossible to do so far away. 
It has been said that Mr. Marconi has 
done nothing new. He has not discovered 
any new rays; his transmitter is compara- 
tively old ; his receiver is based on Branly’s 
coherer. Columbus did not invent the egg, 
but he showed how to make it stand on its 
end, and Marconi has produced from known 
means a new electric eye more delicate 
than any known electrical instrument, and 
a new system of telegraphy that will reach 
places hitherto inaccessible. There are a 
great many practical points connected with 
this system that require to be threshed out 
in a practical manner before it can be placed 
on the market, but enough has been done 
to prove its value, and to show that for 
shipping and lighthouse purposes it will be 
a great and valuable acquisition. 
CHARACTERS, CONGENITAL AND ACQUIRED. 
Tue characters of a living organism, 
plant or animal, are usually grouped by 
biologists under two heads, the congenital, 
or inborn, and the acquired. But hitherto 
no systematic attempt has been made to 
give precision to these terms—to define pre- 
cisely what we mean by them, and in the 
case of any particular organism to ascer- 
tain exactly which of its characters are in- 
born and which acquired. I know nothing 
in the whole range of science which promises 
to the thinker more immediate and solid 
results than this strangely neglected field 
of investigation. For example, had it re- 
ceived the attention it deserved, it is proba- 
ble that the great controversy as to the 
transmissibility of acquired traits between 
‘the Neo-Lamarckian and Darwinian schools 
would long ago have ceased, since only 
after it has been definitely determined 
whether this or that trait is inborn or ac- 
quired can the fact of its transmissibility 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Von. VI. No. 155. 
or non-transmissibility profitably be used 
as an argument for or against the La- 
marckian doctrine. This precisely the dis- 
putants have not done—an assertion I shall 
justify presently. To deal with my subject 
adequately one should have the powers of 
a Darwin or a Herbert Spencer ; if, however, 
I can contrive to direct attention to it I 
shall be well content. 
An inborn variation may be defined as 
one which arises in an organism owing to 
changes previously produced by the action 
of the environment in the germ cell (or 
pair of germ cells) whence it sprang. As 
inborn variations are admittedly transmis- 
sible, all inborn characters must have arisen 
thus in the ancestry* and, deductively, it 
must follow, as, indeed, may easily be 
proved inductively,; that changes in a 
germ cell tend to be reproduced in its de- 
scendant germ cells, for which reason the 
organisms that arise from them tend also 
to reproduce the inborn variations of the 
parent organism. 
An acquired character may be defined as 
one which arises in the organism owing to 
changes produced by the action of the en- 
vironment, not on the germ cell, but on 
the somatic cells derived from it. If ac- 
quired modifications are transmissible, then 
changes in the somatic cells must tend so to 
modify the germ cells associated with them 
that, as a consequence, the organisms they 
proliferate into tend to reproduce, as inborn 
characters, the particular variations which 
were acquired by the parent organism. 
* That is, if we accept the Neo-Darwinian doctrine. 
+ All unicellular organisms are germ cells ; that 
is, they are all capable of continuing the species. 
When modified by the action of the environment 
they tend to transmit their modifications to descend- 
ant organisms, as has been abundantly proved by 
bacteriologists. A striking example is afforded by 
the organism which produces small-pox. If trans- 
ferred to the cow it becomes so modified in the new 
environment that it everafterwards causes in man, 
not small-pox, but cow-pox. 
