12 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
former paper he was able from a careful examination of 
the body to discover that the man had been a “‘ trimmer”’ 
on board ship, employed in arranging and storing the 
cargo and coal, and therefore accustomed to lift up and 
throw heavy weights. 
But Mr. Lane goes even further, and in one of his 
papers, entitled ‘‘Can the Existence of a Tendency to 
Change in the Form of the Skeleton of the Parent Result 
in the Actuality of that Change in the Offspring ?”* 
he advances the idea that such changes as we are con- 
sidering can be inherited and intensified, so that in a 
family of shoemakers the effect in say the grandson 
may be very much more marked than it was in the 
grandfather ; and Professor Sir William ‘Turner, of 
Edinburgh, informs me that he is of opinion that the 
particular habits of a tribe, such as the tree-climbing 
Australians, or those natives of the interior of New Guinea 
whose houses are built in the upper branches of lofty trees, 
not only affect each generation individually, but have an 
intensified action through the influence of heredity.t In 
these and other papers by anatomists I find no reference to 
the action of natural selection, although it is obvious on a 
little reflection that that process may help considerably, 
since any favourable variation in the skeleton which 
enabled its possessor to adapt himself more readily to 
his peculiar surroundings, such as tree-climbing, would be 
of advantage in the struggle for existence, and would 
therefore be marked out for survival by the eliminating 
action of natural selection. 
_ Another factor in evolution which Herbert Spencer 
* Jour. Anat. and Physiol., vol. xxii., p. 215. 1888. 
+ See his Report on the Human Skeletons obtained during the Challenger 
Expedition (Zool. Chall. Exp., pt. xlvii.), pt. ii., p. 88; and also Jour. Anat. 
and Physiol., vol. xxi., p. 473. 1887. 

