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.1%8 
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 Mdébius made his experiment 
138Galton: 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. 
