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[Vol. XV. No. 367 



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Vol. XV. NEW YOEK, Feertiaey 14, 1890. No. 367. 



CONTENTS 



"WlKE-ROPE Teamways.. . -■ 101 



The Significance of the De- 

 gree OF Bachelor of Arts — 104 

 "Health Matters. 



The Role of Potable Waters in 

 the Etiology of Typhoid-Fever 106 



The Grippe and Cholera 106 



Burial Reform in England. ...... 107 



Action of the Liver on Poisons . . 107 

 Does Salting Meat Destroy Bac- 

 teria ? 107 



The Electrical Phenomena of the 



Human Heart 107 



The Health of London in 1£89. . . . 107 

 Floods and Their Results from a 



Sanitary Standpoint 107 



-Cholera and Europe ; ; 108 



Mental Science. 

 The Rapidity of Mental Pro- 

 cesses in Insanity 108 



A Curious Mental Trait 108 



>foTESAND News 108 



The Paleontological Evidence 

 FOR the Transmission of Ac- 

 quired Characters. 



Henrij Fairfield Osborn. 110 

 American Archives in Seville .. . Ill 

 Book Reviews. 

 De la Suggestion et du Somnam- 



bulisme 113 



Among the Publishers 114 



Letters to the Editor. 

 Supposed Aboriginal Fish- Weirs 

 in Naaman's Creek, near Clay- 

 mont, Del. Hllborne T.Cresson. 116 

 Oscillations of Lakes (Seiches'). 



W. M. Davis. 117 



THE PALEONTOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE TRANS- 

 MISSION OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS.' 



Much of the evidence brought forward in France and Germany 

 in support of the transmission of acquired characters, which has 

 been so ably criticised in Weismann' s recent essays, is of a very 

 different order from that forming the main position of the so- 

 called Neo-Lamarckians in America. It is true that most Ameri- 

 can zoologists, somewliat upon Semper' s lines, have supported 

 the theory of the direct action of environment, always ^assuming, 

 liowever, the question of ti-ansmission. But Cope, the able if 

 somewhat extreme advocate of these views, with Hyatt, Ryder, 

 Brooks, Dall, and others, holding that "the survival of the fit- 

 test" is now amply demonstrated, submit that, in our present 

 need of an explanation of the origin of the fittest, the principle 

 jof selection is inadequate, and have broviglit forward and dis- 

 scussed the evidence for the inherited modifications produced by 

 Te-actions in the organism itself : in other words, the indirect ac- 

 tion of environment. The supposed arguments from pathology 

 .and mutilations have not been considered at all: these "ivould in- 

 volve the immediate inheritance of characters impressed upon 

 .the organism and not springing from internal re-actions, and 

 tthus differ, both in tlie element of time and in their essential 

 jjrinciple, from the above. As the selection principle is allowed 



•> This article is an informal reply to the position taken by Professor Weis- 

 jmanm in his essays upon heredity. I have borrowed freely from the materials 

 .of Cope, Ryder, and others, without thinking it necessary to give acknowledg- 

 ^anent in each case. [Reprinted from Nature.] 



all that Darwin claimed for it in his later writings, this school 

 stands for Lamarckism plus — not versus — Darwinism, as Lan- 

 kester has recently put it. There is naturally a diversity of 

 opinion as to how far each of these principles is operative, not 

 that they conflict. 



The following views are adopted from those held by Cope and ■ 

 others, so far as they conform to my own observations and apply 

 to the class of variations which come within the range of paleon- 

 tological evidence. In the life of the individual, adaptation is 

 increased by local and general metatrophio changes, of necessity 

 correlated, which take place most rapidly in tlie regions of least 

 perfect adaptation, since here the re-actions are gi-eatest. The 

 main ti-end of variation is determined by the slow transmission, 

 not of the full increase of adaptation, but of the disposition to 

 adaptive atrophy or hypertrophy at certain points. The varia- 

 tions thus transmitted are accumulated by the selection of the 

 individuals in which they are most marked, and by the extinc- 

 tion of inadaptive varieties or species. Selection is thus of the 

 ensemble of new and modified charactei-s. Finally, there is suffi- 

 cient paleontological and morphological evidence that acquired 

 characters, in the above limited sense, are transmitted. 



In the pi-esent state of discussion, every thing turns upon the 

 last proposition. Wliile we freely admit that ti-ansmission has 

 been generally assumed, a mass of direct evidence for this 

 assumption has nevertheless been accumulating, chiefly in the 

 field of paleontology. This has evidently not reached Professor 

 Weismann, for no one could show a fairer controversial spirit, 

 when he states repeatedlj^, ' 'Not a single fact hitherto brought 

 forward can be accepted as proof of the assumption. ' ' It is, of 

 course, possible for a number of vrriters to fall together into a 

 false line of reasoning from certain facts. It must, however, be 

 pointed out that we are now deciding between two alternatives 

 only ; viz. , pure selection, and selection pins transmission. 



The distinctive feature of our rich paleontological evidence is 

 that it covers the entire pedigi-ee of variations : we are present 

 not only at, but before birth, so to speak. Among many ex- 

 amples, I shall select here only a single -illustration from the 

 mammalian series, — the evolution of the molar teeth associated 

 with the peculiar evolution of the feet in the horses. The feet, 

 starting with plantigrade bear-like forms, present a continuous 

 series of re-adjustments of the twenty-six original elements to 

 digitigradism which furnish proof sufficient to the Lamarckian. 

 But, as selectionists would explain this complex development and 

 reduction by panmixia, and the selection of favorable fortuitous 

 correlations of elements already present, the teeth render us more 

 direct service in this discussion, since they furnish not only the 

 most intricate correlations and re-adjustments, but the complete 

 history of the addition of a number of entirely new elements, — 

 the rise of useful sti-uctures from their minute embryonic, ap- 

 parently useless, condition, the most vulnerable point in the pure 

 selection theory. Here are opportunities we have never enjoyed 

 before in tlie study of the variation problem. 



Tlie first undoubted ancestor of the horse is Hyracotherium. 

 Let us look back into the early history of its multicuspid upper 

 molars, every step of which is now known. Upon the probabil- 

 ity that mammalian teeth were developed from the reptilian 

 type, Cope predicted in 1871 that the first accessory cusps would 

 be found on the anterior and posterior slopes of asingle cone ; i.e. , 

 at the points of interference of an isognathous series in closing 

 the jaws. Mvich later I showed that precisely this condition is 

 filled in the unique molars of the Upper Triassic Dromotlierium. 

 These, with the main cusp, form the tlu'ee elements of the tri- 

 tubercular crown. Passing by several well-known stages, we 

 reach one in which the heel of the lower molai's intersects, and, 

 by wearing, produces depressions in the transverse ridges of the 

 upper molars. At these points are developed the intermediate 

 tubercles which play so important a role in the history of the 

 ungulate molars. So, without a doubt, every one of the five 

 main component cusps superadded to the original cones is first 

 prophesied by a point of extreme wear, replaced by a minute 

 tubercle, and grows into a cusp. The most worn teeth, i.e. , the 

 first true molars, are those in which these processes taie place 

 most rapidly. We compare hundreds of specimens of related 



