HEREDITY. 461 



One of the cases which is cited in opposition to the 

 view here sustained, is the alleged fact that the artifi- 

 cial contraction of the feet undergone by high-caste 

 Chinese female children, resulting in deformity of the 

 feet of the women, is not inherited. That this abnor- 

 mality has never been transmitted has not yet been 

 satisfactorily shown ; but in any case there are some 

 reasons why it should not be inherited. One of these 

 is, that the deformity is confined to one sex. The 

 male, who is without it, has the advantage of an an- 

 cestry possessing normal feet extending backwards 

 indefinitely, while the modification of the female is a 

 very modern interference with the law of the species. 

 Moreover, a positive stimulus to ontogenetic growth, 

 such as is in this instance furnished by the male, is 

 always likely to be prepotent as .compared with the 

 negative part played by the female. 



Professor Poulton, whose interesting experiments 

 in the production of color changes in lepidopterous 

 larvae and pupae have been previously cited, states that 

 none of the color varieties which he has obtained, have 

 been inherited. I cannot regard this result as con- 

 clusive until the experiments have been continued for 

 a longer period than has yet been possible to devote 

 to them. 



Perhaps the strongest case that can be made out 

 against the theory of use-inheritance as defended in 

 the present book, is that of the variety of structure 

 displayed by the neuter members of the colonies of 

 ants and termites. Mr. W. P. Ball describes these 

 briefly as follows : ^ 



"But there happens to be a tolerably clear proof 

 that such changes as the evolution of complicated 



\The Effects of Use and Disuse, Nature Series, 1890, p. 24. 



