INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT 343 



inherited and thus brought about progressive 

 evolution. Long ago desire or need was repu- 

 diated as a factor of evolution. Lowell satir- 

 ized it in his Biglow Papers in these words : 



"Some filosifers think that a fakkilty's granted 

 The minnit it's felt to be thoroughly wanted, 



£fc '^te. 3U. gfe 3jg 



That the fears of a monkey whose holt chanced to 



fail 

 Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail." 



Darwin wrote to Hooker, "Heaven forfend me 

 from Lamarck's nonsense of adaptation from 

 the slow willing of animals" ; but although he 

 repudiated this feature of Lamarckism he held 

 that characters due to use or disuse and to 

 changed conditions of life might be inherited 

 and he proposed his hypothesis of pangenesis 

 in order to explain the process of the trans- 

 mission of such characters to the germ cells. 

 Weismann introduced a new era in biology 

 by denying the inheritance of all kinds of ac- 

 quired characters, and by challenging the 

 world to produce evidence that would stand 

 a rigorous analysis. But Weismann's great- 

 est service lay in his constructive theories 

 rather than in destructive criticism ; he forever 

 disposed of theories of pangenesis and the like 



