BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION 67 
It is noteworthy in this connection that Darwin and Wallace 
had diametrically opposite theories as to the cause of the more 
brilliant plumage of male birds. ‘‘ According to Darwin, the 
gayness of male birds is due to selection on the part of the 
females; according to Wallace, the soberness of female birds is 
due to natural selection, which has eliminated those which per- 
sisted to the death in being gay.”’! 
Heredity. The fifth and last link to be considered does not 
yield to Darwin added fame. A follower of Lamarck in the belief 
that acquired characters were inherited, he was led to make use of 
this refuge when hard pressed by his opponents. His construc- 
tive theory, that of pangenesis, — given to the world against 
the advice of Huxley, ? — was so completely disproved by Weis- 
mann as to receive scant reference today, though here, too, he was 
a prophet and the hope expressed to Sir Joseph Hooker has been 
fulfilled: “ I feel sure that if pangenesis is stillborn it will, thank 
God, at some future time reappear, begotten by some other father 
and christened by some other name.” * Cytology has taken up 
his task and some who have received his mantle are striving 
earnestly to discover the secret hidden from his, and up to the 
present, from all human eyes, — the mystery of heredity. De 
Vries has made some use of Darwin’s hypothesis in his theory of 
“intracellular pangenesis,”’ so too Weismann in his theory of 
“determinants,” but laboratory experiments have not as yet 
added conviction to assumption. 
The transmission of acquired characters in the sense used by 
Lamarck, Spencer and Darwin has, been all but disproven, 
though as we shall see later there is proof of the influence of 
ontogenetic variations on the offspring, and some ground for 
believing that habit and environment may furnish conditions 
favorable for modification of the germ plasm. 
In concluding our discussion of Darwin and the bearing of his 
theory of natural selection on the problem of this study, first place 
must be given to the new spirit infused into biological and social 
science by the publication of his Origin of Species. With 
1 The Evolution of Sex, Geddes and Thomson, p. 10; Wallace, Darwinism, pp. 
274. Cf£ Morgan, cited above pp. 213 ff. 
2 Cf. Fifty Years of Darwinism, p. 93. 3 Ibid., p. 94- 
