FACTS OP INHERITANCE 161 



saturating influences such as poisons, are not 

 cogent. 



VIII. Modifications may have secondary effects 

 on the germ-cells and the offspring, e.g. in the way 

 of bad nutrition, but unless the offspring show 

 peculiarities in the same direction as the original 

 modifications, we have no data bearing precisely 

 on the question at issue. 



A behef in the inheritance of modifications was 

 perhaps expressed in the old proverb, " The fathers 

 have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth 

 are set on edge " — a proverb which Ezekiel, with 

 such solemnity, said was not any more to be used 

 in Israel. Now if " setting on edge " was a 

 structural modification, and if the children's teeth 

 were " set on edge " as their fathers' had been 

 before them, there would be a presumption in 

 favour of the transmission of this acquired char- 

 acter, though it would be still necessary to inquire 

 carefully whether the children had not been in the 

 vineyard too. If, as Eomanes said, the children 

 were born with wry necks, we should have to deal 

 with the inheritance of an indirect result of the 

 parents' vagaries of appetite, and not with any 

 direct representation in inheritance of the particu- 

 lar modification produced in the paternal dentition. 



IX. Finally, there is no use appealing to data 

 from fewer than three generations. Sheep trans- 

 ported to a cold country get longer fleece, their 

 offspring have still longer fleece ; but this is not 

 to the point, since the offspring were subjected to 

 the modifying influences from birth. We wish 

 to know whether the third generation is more 

 markedly modified than the second. 



Disease. — ^As a particular case we may take 



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