The Making of Species 
vol. xxvi, No. 3, of the Avchw fir Ent- 
wicklungsmechanik des Organismen, states: 
“The dogma that acquired characters cannot 
be inherited ... is founded not so much on 
evidence, or the absence of evidence, as on @ 
priori reasoning, on the supposed difficulty or 
impossibility of conceiving a means by which 
such inheritance could be effected.” \ Such 
appears certainly to be true of some zoologists, 
but we trust that Mr Cunningham will do us the 
justice to believe that our opinion that the in- 
heritance of acquired characters does not play 
an important part in the evolution of, at any 
rate, the higher animals, is based, not on the 
ground of a priori reasoning, but on facts. 
All the evidence seems to show that such 
characteristics are not inherited. If, as Mr 
Cunningham thinks, all secondary sexual 
characters are due to the inheritance of the 
effects of use, etc., how is it that no Neo- 
Lamarckian is able to bring forward a clear 
case of the inheritance of a well-defined acquired 
character? If such characteristics are habitually 
inherited, countless examples should be forth- 
coming. Fanciers in their endeavours are con- 
stantly “doctoring” the animals they keep for 
show purposes ;' and it seems to us certain that 
if acquired characters are inherited, breeders 
would long ago have discovered this and acted 
upon the discovery. If Neo-Darwinians are 
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