NEOLAMARCKISM 4O9 



the effects of outward influences on the animal body, 

 and very little to their effects upon vegetable organ- 

 isms." Whereas if he had read his Lamarck care- 

 fully, he would have seen that the French evolu- 

 tionist distinctly states that the environment acts 

 directly on plants and the lower animals, but indi- 

 rectly on those animals with a brain, meaning the 

 higher vertebrates. The same anti-selection views 

 are held by Rimer's pupil, Piepers,* who explains 

 organic evolution by " laws of growth, . . . un- 

 controlled by any process of selection." 



Dr. Cunningham likewise, in the preface to his 

 translation of Elmer's work, gives his reasons for 

 adopting Neolamarckian views, concluding that " the 

 theory of selection can never get over the difificulty of 

 the origin of entirely new characters; " that " selec- 

 tion, whether natural or artificial, could not be the 

 essential cause of the evolution of organisms." In 

 an article on " The New Darwinism " {Westminster 

 Review, July, 1891) he claims that Weismann's the- 

 ory of heredity does not explain the origin of horns, 

 venomous teeth, feathers, wings of insects, or mam- 

 mary glands, phosphorescent organs, etc., which 

 have arisen on animals whose ancestors never had 

 anything similar. 



Discussing the origin of whales and other aquatic 

 mammals, W. Kukenthal suggests that the modifi- 

 cations are partially attributable to mechanical prin- 

 ciples. (Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist., February, 

 1891.) 



From his studies on the variation of butterflies, 



* Die Farbenevolution bei den Pieriden. Leiden, 1898. 



