1893.] Scientific News. 191 
SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
What Is an Acquired Character ?—I suppose that I am the 
person to whom Prof. Nutting refers (December, p. 1009) as “ the 
member ” who, at the Rochester meeting, “ had the temerity to confess 
that he was not sure that he knew the exact nature of an ‘acquired 
character. ” I have been strongly impressed with the feeling that 
argument against the position of Weismann and his followers is useless, 
from the method of these writers in explaining away whatever proofs of 
the hereditability of acquired characters one may bring forward. The 
definitions of an acquired character are themselves sufficiently vague 
and various, but the treatment of individual instances by the Neo- 
Darwinians seems to preclude the possibility of argument. Prof. 
Ward has well said that Weismann’s “ treatment of this point (hered- 
itability of acquired characters) often borders on the dogmatic.” The 
practice seems to be to use the definition as a stalking-horse to shield 
the philosopher from the onslaughts of his opponents. If he is driven 
into a corner it is easy enough to say that the character in question 
is not acquired, but that there existed a predisposition to it; and while 
he cannot afford any proof of the assertion and may not be able to 
bring furward any reason for it beyond its convenience as a method of 
escape, his opponent cannot dislodge him from his position. It seems 
to me, as I said at Rochester, that much of this argument is but a war 
of words; and Prof. Nutting has precisely indicated my own difficul- 
ties concerning it. 
I have been growing plants for a single generation in soils of 
different chemical composition, the seeds having been taken from the 
same fruit. These plants show characteristic differences, and when 
the seeds from the different lots are sown in one soil the resulting 
plants show that some of the novel characters become hereditary for a 
generation or more. If I were to bring these experiments forward as 
proof of the transmission of acquired characters, my opponents would 
simply say, “Oh, well, these are not acquired characters; there was a 
predisposition to them.” 
I may remark here that an inexhaustible field for study of contem- 
- poraneous evolution is afforded by common cultivated “plants ; and if 
we are to consider acquired characters in the Darwinian sense, I fancy | 
that no one could long be a horticulturist without becoming a con- 
firmed believer in their transmission.—L. H. Barry, Cornell Univer- 
sity. j 
