The Inheritance of Acquired Characters 57 
tion. He claims that we should not expect the inheritance of 
short tails, because even if such an influence were transmitted 
to the egg, the young embryo would promptly regenerate its 
missing portions. Unfortunately there is no evidence that they 
can regenerate in the embryo. 
It has been claimed that the removal of or injury to an organ 
is a different process from the modification of an organ caused by 
some external condition. There are, however, cases in which 
an organ has been greatly modified for several generations and 
no inherited effect has been produced. The feet of Chinese 
women are compressed so that their form is greatly changed, 
and in the higher classes this has been kept up for generations, 
yet no effect has been produced on the feet of the children. 
Certain races of Indians are known to have changed the shape 
of the heads of their children by compressing them between 
boards, yet the effect does not seem to have been inherited. 
Tight lacing may change very greatly the shape of the ribs and 
to some extent the position of the viscera, yet no inherited effect 
has been produced. 
We may now consider the cases of the supposed inherited 
effect of use and of disuse. We are familiar with the decrease 
of a part in size and in function through disuse, in the case of 
muscles, glands, bones, etc., and also with the enlargement of 
organs through use. It is especially this class of facts that 
impressed Lamarck, and which led him to assume that these 
effects are inherited. The rudimentary eyes of animals living 
in the dark are often cited as having resulted from disuse. The 
long neck of the giraffe and the long tongue of the ant-eater, of 
humming birds, and of woodpeckers are examples, that La- 
marck has given, of effects produced by use; and many natu- 
ralists since Lamarck’s time have cited these and other similar 
cases as bearing on the question. But neither Lamarck nor 
his successors have been able to demonstrate by experiment 
that the effects of use and disuse of this kind are inherited by 
the next generation, and until this proof is forthcoming we 
must regard their view as purely speculative. It is surprising 
