50 The American Naturalist. [January, 
fication is of service, then presumably it will add to the viability 
of the individual, and through the interaction of the soma and 
the germplasm, in connection with their respective nutritive 
changes, will so affect the latter as to lead to its being transmitted 
to the offspring. From this point of view the environment would, 
as it were, determine and regulate the nature of those variations 
which are to become hereditary, and the possibility of variations 
arising which are likely to prove useful becomes greater than on 
the theory that the soma exercises no influence on the germplasm. 
Hence I am unable to accept the proposition that somatogenic 
characters are not transmitted, and I cannot but think that they 
form an important factor in the production of hereditary 
characters.” | 
These are the views of two of England’s most distinguished 
biologists, and we find them to be in strong contrast to those ex- 
pressed by Dr. Wallace and Prof. Lankester, no less able men in 
their respective fields. Dr. Wallace does not yet see beyond 
natural selection, and well illustrates the peculiar blindness to the 
nature of the origin of variations which is prevalent in quarters 
which hold to what they consider to be pure Darwinism, but 
which has been better termed “ post-Darwinism.” But as an il- 
lustration of how difficult it is to keep one’s eyes from twisting 
to the right, Dr. Wallace does actually endeavor to explain the 
origin of the rotated eye of the flat-fish by appealing to the inheri- 
tance of an acquired character, which is ever increased by the 
transmission of additional acquisition. This is, as wittily remarked 
by Lankester, “ flat Lamarckism.” And Lankester has slipped 
into rationality in the same way, in attributing the asymmetry of 
the Gastropod Mollusca “to the cumulative effect of a mechanical 
cause.” Both these gentlemen thus inadvertently abandon the 
major premise of the post-Darwinians—that acquired characters 
cannot be inherited. Prof. Weismann and others endeavor to sus- 
tain this position by experimenting on the inheritance of mutila- 
tion, as though it were not already sufficiently well known that 
broken heads and legs are not inherited! The evidence of 
palzontology ought to be of some value as to what is and what is 
not inherited, but this has not yet come fairly into the hands of 

