No. 507] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 



L49 



Competition has, however, been almost completely 

 neglected until the ecologist has begun the investigation 

 of it in the last few years, and there are few subjects in 

 which botanical opinion is so completely unformed. 



Inheritance of Acquired Characters 

 Darwin's opinions upon this subject appear to have 

 been modified little with time, contrary to the case with 

 other views. Here again he was in almost complete 

 accord with Lamarck and Saint-Hilaire, but he seems to 

 have had little effect upon current opinion, especially 

 among zoologists. The experimental ecologist would 

 doubtless follow Darwin in regarding the inheritance of 

 acquired characters as proved beyond question. Indica- 

 tions are not lacking that more and more botanists are 

 coming to the same point of view. Darwin's attitude 

 may be summed up in the following : 



The increased use and disuse of various organs produces an inherited 

 effect. 18 



With plants, the period of vegetation is easily changed, and is in- 

 herited, as in the case of summer and winter wheat, barley and 

 vetches. 17 



Changed habits produce an inherited effect, as in the period of the 

 flowering of plants when transplanted from one climate to another." 



Habit is hereditary with plants, as in the period of flowering, in the 

 time of sleep, in the amount of rain requisite for seeds to germinate, 



Perhaps the correct way of viewing the whole subject would be to 

 look at the inheritance of every character whatever as the rule, and 

 non-inheritance the anomaly. 20 



Mutation 



Darwin's attitude towards the sudden appearance of 

 striking variations, of sports, and monstrosities towards 

 what is now called mutation, is one held by the majority 

 of American botanists to-day. To the latter, DeVries 

 has supplied the scientific proof of origin by sudden and 

 striking variation, but only a small number, the followers 

 of DeVries, regard mutation as the fundamental or uni- 



