450 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



series of experiments on the inheritance of mutilations and 

 diseases were those of Brown-Sequard on Guinea-pigs. His 

 experiments consisted in performing various operations on the 

 nervous systems of these animals, and noting the effects pro- 

 duced. He found that in a number of cases such effects 

 were inherited by some of the descendants of the diseased 

 animals. 



Brown-Sequard's work is now discredited, since subsequent 

 workers have failed to confirm his results, though it is probable 

 that no one else has during thirty years reared so many thou- 

 sand Guinea-pigs as he did. 



Until someone else has repeated Kammerer's work it is 

 probable that such remarkable results will be regarded with 

 some suspicion by orthodox zoologists, but the experiments 

 are described so fully and accompanied by such clear figures 

 that they ought surely to make us pause before absolutely deny- 

 ing the possibility of the inheritance of acquired characters. 



