FIFTY YEARS OF DARWINISM 39 



cestors is an example of the mistaken interpre- 

 tations into which even Darwin was led by fol- 

 lowing the hypothesis of Lamarck. 



FRANCIS DARWIN ON THE TRANSMISSION OF 

 ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



One of the most recent attempts to defend the 

 Lamarckian doctrine of the hereditary transmis- 

 sion of acquired characters is contained in the 

 important Presidential Address of Mr. Francis 

 Darwin to the British Association at Dublin 

 (1908). In this interesting memoir the author 

 expresses his belief that such transmission is im- 

 plied by the persistence of the successive develop- 

 mental stages through which the individual 

 advances toward maturity. Following Hering 

 and Richard Semon he is disposed to explain the 

 hereditary transmission of these stages by a 

 process analogous to memory. It is interesting 

 to observe that this very analogy had been 

 brought before Charles DarAvin, but failed to sat- 

 isfy him. He wrote ^ to G. J. Romanes, May 29, 

 1876:— 



' More Letters, I, p. 364. See also the following sentence in 

 a letter on Pangenesis, written June 3, 1868, to Fritz Miiller: " It 

 often appears to me almost certain that the characters of the 

 parents are 'photographed' on the child, only by means of 

 material atoms derived from each cell in both parents, and devel- 

 oped in the child." '^ More Letters, II, p. 83. The following 

 passage in a letter to Sir Joseph Hooker, February 28, 1868, is 

 also of great interest: "When you or Huxley say that a single 

 ceU of a plant, or the stump of an amputated limb, has the 

 ' potentiality ' of reproducing the whole or ' diffuse an influence,' 

 these words give me no positive Idea; — but when it is said that 

 the cells of a plant, or stump, include atoms derived from every 

 other cell of the whole organism and capable of development, I 

 gain a distinct idea." Life and Letters, III, p. 81. 



