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diff --git a/26438-h/26438-h.htm b/26438-h/26438-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9ba53f --- /dev/null +++ b/26438-h/26438-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4083 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?, by William Platt Ball + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .noin {text-indent: 0em;} + body > p {text-indent: 1em;} + body > h3,h2 {margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} + h1,h2,h3 {clear: both; font-weight: normal;} + hr {width: 65%; margin: 2em auto; clear: both;} + .shr,.bk1 {margin: 1em auto;} + table {margin: .25em auto;} + table td {vertical-align: bottom;} + .td1 {text-align: left; font-size: large; padding-top: .5em;} + .td2,.td4 {text-align: right;} + .td3 {text-align: left; padding-right: 6em; padding-left: 2em;} + .td4,.td5,.shr {width: 50%;} + .td4 {padding-right: .5em;} + .td5 {text-align: left; padding-left: .5em; border-left: solid 1px black;} + body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: small; font-style: normal; text-align: right; text-indent: 0em;} + .center,h1,h2,h3,.p3,.p4,.p5 {text-align: center;} + .smcap,.td3 {font-variant: small-caps;} + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px; margin-top: 2em;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: 0.25em; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + .trn {border: solid 1px; margin: 3em 15%; padding: 1em; text-align: justify;} + a:link, a:visited {text-decoration: none;} + .bk1 {width: 32em;} + .bk1 p:first-line {font-size: medium;} + .bk1 p {text-indent: -2em; padding-left: 2em;} + .p1 {text-decoration: underline; margin-bottom: 2em;} + .p3 {margin-top: 4em;} + .p5,.p3 {line-height: 1.5;} + .p4 {margin-top: 2em;} + .p6 {text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .5em;} + .fss,.p6,.bk1 p {font-size: small;} + .fxl,.p1 {font-size: x-large;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?, by +William Platt Ball + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? + An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin + +Author: William Platt Ball + +Release Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #26438] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EFFECTS OF USE AND DISUSE *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="bk1"> +<div class="p1"><i>NATURE SERIES</i></div> + +<h1>ARE THE EFFECTS OF USE AND +DISUSE INHERITED?</h1> + +<div class="p5"><i><big>AN EXAMINATION OF THE VIEW HELD BY<br /> +SPENCER AND DARWIN</big></i></div> + +<h2><span class="fss">BY</span><br /> +WILLIAM PLATT BALL</h2> + +<div class="p3"><big><b>London</b></big><br /> +<big>MACMILLAN AND CO.</big><br /> +<small>AND NEW YORK</small><br /> +<small>1890</small></div> + +<div class="p4"><i><small>The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved</small></i></div> +</div> + +<hr /> + +<div class="center"><small><span class="smcap">Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,<br /> +London and Bungay.</span></small></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + +<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">My</span> warmest thanks are due to Mr. Francis +Darwin, to Mr. E. B. Poulton (whose interest in +the subject here discussed is shown by his share +in the translation of Weismann's <i>Essays on +Heredity</i>), and to Professor Romanes, for the help +afforded by their kindly suggestions and criticisms, +and for the advice and recommendation under +which this essay is now published. Encouragement +from Mr. Francis Darwin is to me the more +precious, and the more worthy of grateful recognition, +from the fact that my general conclusion +that acquired characters are <i>not</i> inherited is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span> +at variance with the opinion of his revered father, +who aided his great theory by the retention of +some remains of Lamarck's doctrine of the inherited +effect of habit. I feel as if the son, as +representative of his great progenitor, were carrying +out the idea of an appreciative editor who +writes to me: "We must say that if Darwin were +still alive, he would find your arguments of great +weight, and undoubtedly would give to them the +serious consideration which they deserve." I +hope, then, that I may be acquitted of undue +presumption in opposing a view sanctioned by +the author of the <i>Origin of Species</i>, but already +stoutly questioned and firmly rejected by such +followers of his as Weismann, Wallace, Poulton, +Ray Lankester, and others, to say nothing of its +practical rejection by so great an authority on +heredity as Francis Galton.</p> + +<p>The sociological importance of the subject has +already been insisted on in emphatic terms by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span> +Mr. Herbert Spencer, and this importance may +be even greater than he imagined.</p> + +<p>Civilization largely sets aside the harsh but +ultimately salutary action of the great law of +Natural Selection without providing an efficient +substitute for preventing degeneracy. The substitute +on which moralists and legislators rely—if +they think on the matter at all—is the +cumulative inheritance of the beneficial effects of +education, training, habits, institutions, and so +forth—the inheritance, in short, of acquired +characters, or of the effects of use and disuse. +If this substitute is but a broken reed, then the +deeper thinkers who gradually teach the teachers +of the people, and ultimately even influence the +legislators and moralists, must found their +systems of morality and their criticisms of social +and political laws and institutions and customs +and ideas on the basis of the Darwinian law +rather than on that of Lamarck.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p> + +<p>Looking forward to the hope that the human +race may become consciously and increasingly +master of itself and of its destiny, and recognizing +the Darwinian principle of the selection +of the fittest as the <i>only</i> means of preventing the +moral and physical degeneracy which, like an internal +dry rot, has hitherto been the besetting +danger of all civilizations, I desire that the +thinkers who mould the opinions of mankind shall +not be led astray from the true path of enduring +progress and happiness by reliance on fallacious +beliefs which will not bear examination. Such, at +least, is the feeling or motive which has prompted +me to devote much time and thought to a difficult +but important inquiry in a debatable region of +inference and conjecture, where (I am afraid) +evidence on either side can never be absolutely +conclusive, and where, especially, the absolute +demonstration of a universal negative cannot +reasonably be expected.</p> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td class="td1">PREFACE</td><td class="td2"><small>PAGE</small><br /><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">IMPORTANCE AND BEARING OF THE INQUIRY</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">SPENCER'S EXAMPLES AND ARGUMENTS</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_6">6-44</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Diminution of the Jaws</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Diminished Biting Muscles of Lap-Dogs</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Crowded Teeth</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Blind Cave-Crabs</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">No Concomitant Variation from Concomitant Disuse</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">The Giraffe, and Necessity for Concomitant Variation</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Alleged Ruinous Effects of Natural Selection</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Adverse Case of Neuter Insects</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Æsthetic Faculties</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Lack of Evidence</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_34">34</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Inherited Epilepsy in Guinea-Pigs</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Inherited Insanity and Nervous Disorders</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Individual and Transmissible Type not Modified Alike</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">DARWIN'S EXAMPLES</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_45">45-100</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Reduced Wings of Birds of Oceanic Islands</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Drooping Ears and Deteriorated Instincts</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Wings and Legs of Ducks and Fowls</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Pigeons' Wings</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Shortened Breast-Bone in Pigeons</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Shortened Feet in Pigeons</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Shortened Legs of Rabbits</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Blind Cave-Animals</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Inherited Habits</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Tameness of Rabbits</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Modifications Obviously Attributable to Selection</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Similar Effects of Natural Selection and Use-Inheritance</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Inferiority of Senses in Europeans</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Short-Sight in Watchmakers and Engravers</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Larger Hands of Labourers' Infants</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Thickened Sole in Infants</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">A Source of Mental Confusion</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_91">91</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Weakness of Use-Inheritance</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">INHERITED INJURIES</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_101">101-118</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Inherited Mutilations</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">The Motmot's Tail</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Other Inherited Injuries Mentioned by Darwin</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Quasi-Inheritance</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_119">119-143</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">True Relation of Parents and Offspring</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Inverse Inheritance</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Early Origin of the Ova</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Marked Effects of Use and Disuse on the Individual</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Would Natural Selection Favour Use-Inheritance?</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Use-Inheritance an Evil</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Varied Effects of Use and Disuse</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Use-Inheritance Implies Pangenesis</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Pangenesis Improbable</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Spencer's Explanation of Use-Inheritance</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">CONCLUSIONS</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_144">144-156</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Use-Inheritance Discredited as Unnecessary, Unproven, and Improbable</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td3">Modern Reliance on Use-Inheritance Misplaced</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> +<h1>ARE THE EFFECTS OF USE AND DISUSE INHERITED?</h1> + +<h2>IMPORTANCE AND BEARING OF THE INQUIRY.</h2> + +<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> question whether the effects of use and +disuse are inherited, or, in other words, whether +acquired characters are hereditary, is of considerable +interest to the general student of +evolution; but it is, or should be, a matter of +far deeper interest to the thoughtful philanthropist +who desires to ensure the permanent +welfare and happiness of the human race. So<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +profoundly important, in fact, are the moral, +social, and political conclusions that depend on +the answer to this inquiry, that, as Mr. Herbert +Spencer rightly says, it "demands, beyond all +other questions whatsoever, the attention of +scientific men."</p> + +<p>It is obvious that we can produce important +changes in the individual. We can, for example, +improve his muscles by athletics, and his brain +by education. The use of organs enlarges and +strengthens them; the disuse of parts or faculties +weakens them. And so great is the power of habit +that it is proverbially spoken of as "second +nature." It is thus certain that we can modify +the individual. We can strengthen (or weaken) +his body; we can improve (or deteriorate) his +intellect, his habits, his morals. But there +remains the still more important question which +we are about to consider. Will such modifications +be inherited by the offspring of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +modified individual? Does individual improvement +transmit itself to descendants independently +of personal teaching and example? Have +artificially produced changes of structure or habit +any inherent tendency to become congenitally +transmissible and to be converted in time into +fixed traits of constitution or character? Can the +philanthropist rely on such a tendency as a hopeful +factor in the evolution of mankind?—the only +sound and stable basis of a higher and happier +state of things being, as he knows or ought to +know, the innate and constitutionally-fixed improvement +of the race as a whole. If acquired +modifications are impressed on the offspring and +on the race, the systematic moral training of +individuals will in time produce a constitutionally +moral race, and we may hope to improve mankind +even in defiance of the unnatural selection by which +a spurious but highly popular philanthropy would +systematically favour the survival of the unfittest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +and the rapid multiplication of the worst. +But if acquired modifications do not tend to be +transmitted, if the use or disuse of organs +or faculties does not similarly affect posterity +by inheritance, then it is evident that no +innate improvement in the race can take +place without the aid of natural or artificial +selection.</p> + +<p>Herbert Spencer maintains that the effects of +use and disuse <i>are</i> inherited in kind, and in his +<i>Factors of Organic Evolution</i><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> he has supported +his contention with a selection of facts and reasonings +which I shall have the temerity to examine +and criticize. Darwin also held the same view, +though not so strongly. And here, to prevent +misunderstanding, I may say that the admiration +and reverence and gratitude due to Darwin ought +not to be allowed to interfere in the slightest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +degree with the freest criticism of his conclusions. +To perfect his work by the correction of +really extraneous errors is as much a sacred duty +as to study and apply the great truths he has +taught.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Which originally appeared in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i> for April +and May, 1886.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p> +<h2>SPENCER'S EXAMPLES AND ARGUMENTS.</h2> + +<h3>DIMINUTION OF THE JAWS IN CIVILIZED RACES.</h3> + +<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Mr. Spencer</span> verified this by comparing English +jaws with Australian and Negro jaws at the College +of Surgeons.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> He maintains that the diminution +of the jaw in civilized races can <i>only</i> have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +brought about by inheritance of the effects of +lessened use. But if English jaws are lighter +and thinner than those of Australians and +Negroes, so too is the rest of the skull. As +the diminution in the weight and thickness of +the walls of the cranium cannot well be ascribed +to disuse, it must be attributed to some other +cause; and this cause may have affected the jaw +also. Cessation of the process by which natural +selection<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> favoured strong thick bones during +ages of brutal violence might bring about a +change in this direction. Lightness of structure, +facilitating agility and being economical of +material, would also be favoured by natural +selection so far as strength was not too +seriously diminished.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p><p>Sexual selection powerfully affects the human +face, and so must affect the jaws—as is shown by +the differences between male and female jaws, +and by the relative lightness and smallness of +the latter, especially in the higher races. Human +preference, both sexual and social, would tend +to eliminate huge jaws and ferocious teeth when +these were no longer needed as weapons of war +or organs of prehension, &c. We can hardly +assume that the lower half of the face is specially +exempt from the influence of natural and sexual +selection; and the effects of these undoubted +factors of evolution must be fully considered +before we are entitled to call in the aid of a +factor whose existence is questioned.</p> + +<p>After allowing for lost teeth and the consequent +alveolar absorption, and for a reduction +proportional to that shown in the rest of the +skull, the difference in average weight in fifty +European and fourteen Australian male jaws<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +at the College of Surgeons turned out to be +less than a fifth of an ounce, or about +5 per cent. This slight reduction may be +much more than accounted for by such causes +as disuse in the individual, human preference +setting back the teeth, and partial transference +of the much more marked diminution seen in +female jaws. There is apparently no room for +accumulated <i>inherited</i> effects of ancestral disuse. +The number of jaws is small, indeed; but weighing +them is at least more decisive than Mr. +Spencer's mere inspection.</p> + +<p>The differences between Anglo-Saxon male +jaws and Australian and Tasmanian jaws are +most easily explained as effects of human preference +and natural selection. We can hardly +suppose that disuse would maintain or develop +the projecting chin, increase its perpendicular +height till the jaw is deepest and strongest at +its extremity, evolve a side flange, and enlarge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +the upper jaw-bone to form part of a more +prominent nose, while drawing back the savagely +obtrusive teeth and lips to a more pleasing +and subdued position of retirement and of +humanized beauty. If human preference and +natural selection caused some of these differences, +why are they incompetent to effect changes in +the direction of a diminution of the jaw or teeth? +And if use and disuse are the sole modifying +agents in the case of the human jaw, why +should men have any more chin than a gorilla +or a dog?</p> + +<p>The excessive weight of the West African jaws +at the College of Surgeons is partly <i>against</i> +Mr. Spencer's contention, unless he assumes that +Guinea Negroes use their jaws far more than the +Australians, a supposition which seems extremely +improbable. The heavier skull and narrower +molar teeth point however to other factors than +increased use.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> + +<p>The striking variability of the human jaw is +strongly opposed to the idea of its being under +the direct and dominant control of so uniform a +cause as ancestral use and disuse. Mr. Spencer +regards a variation of 1 oz. as a large one, but I +found that the English jaws in the College of +Surgeons varied from 1·9 oz. to 4·3 oz. (or 5 oz. +if lost teeth were allowed for); Australian jaws +varied from 2 oz. to 4·5 oz. (with <i>no</i> lost teeth to +allow for); while in Negro jaws the maximum +rose to over 5½ oz.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> In spite of disuse some +European jaws were twice as heavy as the lightest +Australian jaw, either absolutely or (in some +cases) relatively to the cranium. The uniformity +of change relied upon by Mr. Spencer is scarcely +borne out by the facts so far as male jaws are +concerned. The great reduction in the weight +of <i>female</i> jaws <i>and skulls</i> evidently points to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +sexual selection and to panmixia under male +protection.</p> + +<p>I think, on the whole, we must conclude that +the human jaws do not afford satisfactory proof +of the inheritance of the effects of use and disuse, +inasmuch as the differences in their weight and +shape and size can be more reasonably and consistently +accounted for as the result of less +disputable causes.</p> + +<h3>DIMINISHED BITING MUSCLES OF LAP-DOGS.</h3> + +<p>The next example, the reduced biting muscles, +&c., of lap-dogs is also unsatisfactory as a proof +of the inheritance of the effects of disuse; for +the change can readily be accounted for without +the introduction of such a factor. The previous +natural selection of strong jaws and teeth and +muscles is reversed. The conscious or unconscious +selection of lap-dogs with the least tendency to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +bite would easily bring about a general enfeeblement +of the whole biting apparatus—weakness +of the parts concerned favouring harmlessness. +Mr. Spencer maintains that the dwindling of the +parts concerned in clenching the jaw is certainly +not due to artificial selection because the modifications +offer no appreciable external signs. Surely +hard biting is sufficiently appreciable by the +person bitten without any visual admeasurement +of the masseter muscles or the zygomatic arches. +Disuse during lifetime would also cause some +amount of degeneracy; and I am not sure that +Mr. Spencer is right in <i>entirely</i> excluding economy +of nutrition from the problem. Breeders would +not over-feed these dogs; and the puppies that +grew most rapidly would usually be favoured.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> +<h3>CROWDED TEETH.</h3> + +<p>The too closely-packed teeth in the "decreasing" +jaws of modern men (p. 13)<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> are also suggestive +of other causes than use and disuse. Why is there +not simultaneous variation in teeth and jaws, if +disuse is the governing factor? Are we to suppose +that the size of the human teeth is maintained +by use at the same time that the jaws are being +diminished by disuse? Mr. Spencer acknowledges +that the crowding of bull-dogs' and lap-dogs' +teeth is caused by the artificial selection of shortened +jaws. If a similar change is really occurring in +man, could it not be similarly explained by some +factor, such as sexual selection, which might +affect the outward appearance at the cost of +less obvious defects or inconveniences?</p> + +<p>Mr. Spencer points to the decay of modern teeth +as a sign or result of their being overcrowded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +through the diminution of the jaw by disuse.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> +But the teeth which are the most frequently overcrowded +are the lower incisors. The upper incisors +are less overcrowded, being commonly pressed +outwards by the lower arc of teeth fitting inside +them in biting. The lower incisors are correspondingly +pressed inwards and closer together. Yet the +upper incisors decay—or at least are extracted—about +twenty times as frequently as the closely +packed lower incisors.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Surely this must indicate +that the cause of decay is not overcrowding.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p><p>The lateness and irregularity of the wisdom teeth +are sometimes supposed to indicate their gradual +disappearance through want of room in a diminishing +jaw. But a note on Tasmanian skulls in the +<i>Catalogue of the College of Surgeons</i> (p. 199) shows +that this lateness and irregularity have been common +among Tasmanians as well as among civilized +races, so that the change can hardly be attributed +to the effects of disuse under civilization.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> +<h3>BLIND CAVE-CRABS.</h3> + +<p>The cave-crabs which have lost their disused +eyes but <i>not the disused eye-stalks</i> appear to illustrate +the effects of natural selection rather than +of disuse. The loss of the exposed, sensitive, and +worse-than-useless eye, would be a decided gain, +while the disused eye-stalk, being no particular +detriment to the crab, would be but slightly +affected by natural selection, though open to the +cumulative effects of disuse. The disused but +better protected eyes of the blind cave-rat are +still "of large size" (<i>Origin of Species</i>, p. 110).</p> + +<h3>NO CONCOMITANT VARIATION FROM +CONCOMITANT DISUSE.</h3> + +<p>It is but fair to add that these instances of the +cave-crab's eye-stalk and the closely-packed teeth +are put forward by Mr. Spencer with the more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +immediate object of proving that there is "no +concomitant variation in co-operative parts," even +when "formed out of the same tissue, like the +crab's eye and its peduncle" (pp. 12-14, 23, 33). +It escapes his notice, however, that in two out +of his three cases it is <i>disuse</i>, or <i>diminished +use</i>, which fails to cause concomitant variation or +proportionate variation.</p> + +<h3>THE GIRAFFE, AND NECESSITY FOR +CONCOMITANT VARIATION.</h3> + +<p>Having unwittingly shown that lessened use of +closely-connected and co-operative parts does not +cause concomitant variation in these parts, Mr. +Spencer concludes that the concomitant variation +requisite for evolution can only be caused +by altered degrees of use or disuse. He elaborately +argues that the many co-ordinated modifications +of parts necessitated by each important<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +alteration in an animal are so complex that they +cannot possibly be brought about except by +the inherited effect of the use and disuse of the +various parts concerned. He holds, for instance, +that natural selection is inadequate to effect +the numerous concomitant changes necessitated +by such developments as that of the long neck +of the giraffe. Darwin, however, on the contrary, +holds that natural selection alone "would have +sufficed for the production of this remarkable +quadruped."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> He is surprised at Mr. Spencer's +view that natural selection can do so little in +modifying the higher animals. Thus one of the +chief arguments with which Mr. Spencer supports +his theory is so poorly founded as to be rejected by +a far greater authority on such subjects. All that +is needed is that natural selection should preserve +the tallest giraffes through times of famine by their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +being able to reach otherwise inaccessible stores of +foliage. The continual variability of all parts of +the higher animals gives scope for innumerable +changes, and Nature is not in a hurry. Mr. +Spencer, however, says that "the chances against +any adequate readjustments fortuitously arising +must be infinity to one." But he has also shown +that altered degree of use does not cause the +needed concomitant variation of co-operative +parts. So the chances against a beneficial change +in an animal must be, at a liberal estimate, infinity +to two. Mr. Spencer, if he has proved anything, +has proved that it is practically impossible that +the giraffe can have acquired a long neck, or the +elk its huge horns, or that any species has ever +acquired any important modification.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wallace, in his <i>Darwinism</i>, answers Mr. +Spencer by a collection of facts showing that +"variation is the rule," that the range of variation +in wild animals and plants is much greater<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +than was supposed, and that "each part varies +to a considerable extent independently" of other +parts, so that "the materials constantly ready +for natural selection to act upon are abundant in +quantity and very varied in kind." While co-operative +parts would often be more or less +correlated, so that they would tend to vary together, +coincident variation is not necessary. The +lengthened wing might be gained in one generation, +and the strengthened muscle at a subsequent +period; the bird in the meanwhile drawing +upon its surplus energy, aided (as I would suggest) +by the strengthening effect of increased use in +the individual. Seeing that artificial selection +of complicated variations has modified animals +in many points either simultaneously or by slow +steps, as with otter-sheep, fancy pigeons, &c. +(many of the characters thus obtained being +clearly independent of use and disuse), natural +selection must be credited with similar powers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +and Mr. Wallace concludes that Mr. Spencer's +insuperable difficulty is "wholly imaginary."</p> + +<p>The extract concerning a somewhat similar +"class of difficulties," which Mr. Spencer quotes +from his <i>Principles of Biology</i>, is faulty in its +reasoning,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> though legitimate in its conclusion +concerning the increasing difficulty of evolution +in proportion with the increasing number and +complexity of faculties to be evolved. But this +increasing difficulty of complex evolution is only +overcome by <i>some</i> favourably-varying individuals +and species—not by all. And as the difficulty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +increases we find neglect and decay of the less-needed +faculties—as with domesticated animals +and civilized men, who lose in one direction while +they gain in another. The increasing difficulty +of complex evolution by natural selection is no +proof whatever of use-inheritance<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> except to those +who confound difficulty with impossibility.</p> + +<h3>ALLEGED RUINOUS EFFECTS OF NATURAL +SELECTION.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Spencer further contends that natural selection, +by unduly developing specially advantageous +modifications without the necessary but complex +secondary modifications, would render the constitution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +of a variety "unworkable" (p. 23). But this +seems hardly feasible, seeing that natural selection +must continually favour the most workable constitutions, +and will only preserve organisms in proportion +as they combine general workableness +with the special modification. On the other hand, +according to Mr. Spencer himself, use-inheritance +must often disturb the balance of the constitution. +Thus it tends to make the jaws and teeth unworkable +through the overcrowding and decay of the +teeth—there being, as his illustrations show, no +simultaneous or concomitant or proportional +variation in relation to altered degree of use +or disuse.</p> + +<h3>ADVERSE CASE OF NEUTER INSECTS.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Spencer also holds that most mental +phenomena, especially where complex or social +or moral, can only be explained as arising from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +use-inheritance, which becomes more and more +important as a factor of evolution as we advance +from the vegetable world and the lower grades +of animal life to the more complex activities, +tastes, and habits of the higher organizations +(preface, and p. 74). But there happens to be a +tolerably clear proof that such changes as the +evolution of complicated structures and habits +and social instincts <i>can</i> take place independently +of use-inheritance. The wonderful instincts of the +working bees have apparently been evolved +(at least in all their later social complications +and developments) without the aid of use-inheritance—nay, +in spite of its utmost opposition. +Working bees, being infertile "neuters," cannot +as a rule transmit their own modifications and +habits. They are descended from countless +generations of queen bees and drones, whose habits +have been widely different from those of the +workers, and whose structures are dissimilar in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +various respects. In many species of ants there +are two, and in the leaf-cutting ants of Brazil +there are <i>three</i>, kinds of neuters which differ from +each other and from their male and female +ancestors "to an almost incredible degree."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> The +soldier caste is distinguished from the workers +by enormously large heads, very powerful mandibles, +and "extraordinarily different" instincts. +In the driver ant of West Africa one kind +of neuter is three times the size of the other,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +and has jaws nearly five times as long. In +another case "the workers of one caste alone carry +a wonderful sort of shield on their heads." One of +the three neuter classes in the leaf-cutting ants +has a single eye in the midst of its forehead. +In certain Mexican and Australian ants some of +the neuters have huge spherical abdomens, which +serve as living reservoirs of honey for the use +of the community. In the equally wonderful +case of the termites, or so-called "white ants" +(which belong, however, to an entirely different +order of insect from the ants and bees) the neuters +are blind and wingless, and are divided into +soldiers and workers, each class possessing the +requisite instincts and structures adapting it +for its tasks. Seeing that natural selection can +form and maintain the various structures and +the exceedingly complicated instincts of ants and +bees and wasps and termites in direct defiance +of the alleged tendency to use-inheritance, surely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +we may believe that natural selection, unopposed +by use-inheritance, is equally competent for +the work of complex or social or mental evolution +in the many cases where the strong presumptive +evidence cannot be rendered almost indisputable +by the exceptional exclusion of the modified +animal from the work of reproduction.</p> + +<p>Ants and bees seem to be capable of altering +their habits and methods of action much as men +do. Bees taken to Australia cease to store +honey after a few years' experience of the mild +winters. Whole communities of bees sometimes +take to theft, and live by plundering hives, first +killing the queen to create dismay among the +workers. Slave ants attend devotedly to their +captors, and fight against their own species. +Forel reared an artificial ant-colony made up +of five different and more or less hostile species. +Why cannot a much more intelligent animal +modify his habits far more rapidly and comprehensively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +without the aid of a factor which is +clearly unnecessary in the case of the more +intelligent of the social insects?</p> + +<h3>ÆSTHETIC FACULTIES.</h3> + +<p>The modern development of music and harmony +(p. 19) is undeniable, but why could it only +have been brought about by the help of the +inheritance of the effects of use? Why are +we to suppose that "minor traits" such as the +"æsthetic perceptions" cannot have been evolved +by natural selection (p. 20) or by sexual selection? +Darwin holds that our musical faculties +were developed by sexual preference long before +the acquisition of speech. He believes that the +"rhythms and cadences of oratory are derived +from previously developed musical powers"—a +conclusion "exactly opposite" to that arrived at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +by Mr. Spencer.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The emotional susceptibility +to music, and the delicate perceptions needed for +the higher branches of art, were apparently the +work of natural and sexual selection in the long +past. Civilization, with its leisure and wealth +and accumulated knowledge, perfects human +faculties by artificial cultivation, develops and +combines means of enjoyment, and discovers +unsuspected sources of interest and pleasure. +The sense of harmony, modern as it seems to be, +must have been a latent and indirect consequence +of the development of the sense of hearing and of +melody. Use, at least, could never have called +it into existence. Nature favours and develops +enjoyments to a certain extent, for they subserve +self-preservation and sexual and social preference +in innumerable ways. But modern æsthetic advance +seems to be almost entirely due to the culture +of latent abilities, the formation of complex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +associations, the selection and encouragement of +talent, and the wide diffusion and imitation of the +accumulated products of the well-cultivated genius +of favourably varying individuals. The fact +that uneducated persons do not enjoy the higher +tastes, and the rapidity with which such tastes are +acquired or professed, ought to be sufficient proof +that modern culture is brought about by far +swifter and more potent influences than use-inheritance. +Neither would this hypothetical +factor of evolution materially aid in explaining +the many other rapid changes of habit brought +about by education, custom, and the changed conditions +of civilization generally. Powerful tastes—as +is incontestably shown in the cases of alcohol and +tobacco—lie latent for ages, and suddenly become +manifest when suitable conditions arise. Every +discovery, and each step in social and moral evolution, +produces its wide-spreading train of consequences. +I see no reason why use-inheritance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +need be credited with any share in the cumulative +results of the invention of printing and the +steam-engine and gunpowder, or of freedom +and security under representative government, or +of science and art and the partial emancipation +of the mind of man from superstition, or of the +innumerable other improvements or changes that +take place under modern civilization.</p> + +<p>Mr. Spencer suggests an inquiry whether the +greater powers possessed by eminent musicians +were not mainly due to the inherited effect of +the musical practice of their fathers (p. 19). +But these great musicians inherited far more than +their parents possessed. The excess of their powers +beyond their parents' must surely be attributed +to spontaneous variation; and who shall say that +the rest was in any way due to use-inheritance? +If, too, the superiority of geniuses proves use-inheritance, +why should not the inferiority of +the sons of geniuses prove the existence of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +tendency which is the exact opposite of use-inheritance? +But nobody collects facts concerning +the degenerate branches of musical families. +Only the favourably varying branches are noticed, +and a general impression of rapid evolution of +talent is thus produced. Such cases might be +explained, too, by the facts that musical faculty +is strong in both sexes, that musical families +associate together, and that the more gifted members +may intermarry. Great musicians are often +astonishingly precocious. Meyerbeer "played +brilliantly" at the age of six. Mozart played +beautifully at four. Are we to suppose that the +effect of the <i>adult</i> practice of parents was inherited +at this early age? If use-inheritance was +not necessary in the case of Handel, whose +father was a surgeon, why is it needed to +account for Bach?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p> +<h3>LACK OF EVIDENCE.</h3> + +<p>The "direct proofs" of use-inheritance are not +as plentiful as might be desired, it appears (pp. +24-28). This acknowledged "lack of recognized +evidence" is indeed the weakest feature in the +case, though Mr. Spencer would fain attribute this +lack of direct proof to insufficient investigation +and to the inconspicuous nature of the inheritance +of the modification. But there is an almost +endless abundance of conspicuous examples of +the effects of use and disuse in the individual. +How is it that the subsequent inheritance of these +effects has not been more satisfactorily observed +and investigated? Horse-breeders and others +could profit by such a tendency, and one cannot +help suspecting that the reason they ignore it +must be its practical inefficacy, arising probably +from its weakness, its obscurity and uncertainty +or its non-existence.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> +<h3>INHERITED EPILEPSY IN GUINEA-PIGS.</h3> + +<p>Brown-Séquard's discovery that an epileptic +tendency artificially produced by mutilating the +nervous system of a guinea-pig is occasionally +inherited may be a fact of "considerable weight," +or on the other hand it may be entirely irrelevant. +Cases of this kind strike one as peculiar exceptions +rather than as examples of a general rule or law. +They seem to show that certain morbid conditions +may occasionally affect both the individual and +the reproductive elements or transmissible type +in a similar manner; but then we also know +that such prompt and complete transmission +of an artificial modification is widely different +from the usual rule. Exceptional cases require +exceptional explanations, and are scarcely good +examples of the effect of a general tendency which +in almost all other cases is so inconspicuous in +its immediate effects. Further remarks on this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +inherited epilepsy can be most conveniently +introduced later on in connection with Darwin's +explanation of the inherited mutilation which it +usually accompanies, but which Mr. Spencer does +not mention.</p> + +<h3>INHERITED INSANITY AND NERVOUS DISORDERS.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Spencer infers that, because insanity is +usually hereditary, and insanity can be artificially +produced by various excesses, therefore this artificially-produced +insanity must also be hereditary +(p. 28). Direct evidence of this conclusion would +be better than a mere inference which may +beg the very question at issue. That the liability +to insanity commonly runs in families is no proof +that strictly non-inherited insanity will subsequently +become hereditary. I think that theories +should be based on facts rather than facts on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +theories, especially when those facts are to be +the basis or proof of a further theory.</p> + +<p>Mr. Spencer also points out that he finds among +physicians "the belief that nervous disorders +of a less severe kind are inheritable"—a general +belief which does not necessarily include the transmission +of purely artificially-produced disorders, +and so misses the point which is really at issue. +He proceeds, however, to state more definitely +that "men who have prostrated their nervous systems +by prolonged overwork or in some other way, +have children more or less prone to nervousness." +The following observations will, I think, warrant +at least a suspension of judgment concerning +this particular form of use-inheritance.</p> + +<p>(1) The nervousness is seen in the <i>children</i> at +an early age, although the nervous prostration +from which it is supposed to be derived obviously +occurs in the parent at a much later period of +life. This change in time is contrary to the rule<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +of inheritance at corresponding periods; and, +together with the unusual promptness and comparative +completeness of the inheritance, it may +indicate a special injury or deterioration of the +reproductive elements rather than true inheritance. +The healthy brain of early life has failed +to transmit its robust condition. Is use-inheritance, +then, only effective for evil? Does it only +transfer the newly-acquired weakness, and not +the previous long-continued vigour?</p> + +<p>(2) Members of nervous families would be liable +to suffer from nervous prostration, and by the +ordinary law of heredity alone would transmit +nervousness to their children.</p> + +<p>(3) The shattered nerves or insanity resulting +from alcoholic and other excesses, or from overwork +or trouble, are evidently signs of a grave +constitutional injury which may react upon the +reproductive elements nourished and developed +in that ruined constitution. The deterioration in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +parent and child may often display itself in the +same organs—those probably which are hereditarily +weakest. Acquired diseases or disorders +thus appear to be transmitted, when all that was +conveyed to the offspring was the exciting cause +of a lowered vitality or disordered action, +together with the ancestral liability to such +diseases under such conditions.</p> + +<p>(4) Francis Galton says that "it is hard to find +evidence of the power of the personal structure +to react upon the sexual elements, that is not +open to serious objection." Some of the cases +of apparent inheritance he regards as coincidence +of effect. Thus "the fact that a drunkard will +often have imbecile children, although his offspring +previous to his taking to drink were healthy," +is an "instance of simultaneous action," and not +of true inheritance. "The alcohol pervades his +tissues, and, of course, affects the germinal +matter in the sexual elements as much as it does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +that in his own structural cells, which have led +to an alteration in the quality of his own nerves. +Exactly the same must occur in the case of +many constitutional diseases that have been +acquired by long-continued irregular habits."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> + +<h3>INDIVIDUAL AND TRANSMISSIBLE TYPE NOT +MODIFIED ALIKE BY THE DIRECT EFFECT OF +CHANGED HABITS OR CONDITIONS.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Spencer finds it hard to believe that the +modifications conveyed to offspring are not identical +in tendency with the changes effected in the +parent by altered use or habit (pp. 23-25, 34). +But it is perfectly certain that the two sets of +effects do not necessarily correspond. The +effect of changed habits or conditions on the +individual is often very far from coinciding with +the effects on the reproductive elements or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +transmissible type. The reproductive system is +"extremely sensitive" to very slight changes, +and is often powerfully affected by circumstances +which otherwise have little effect on the individual +(<i>Origin of Species</i>, p. 7). Various animals and +plants become sterile when domesticated or supplied +with too much nourishment. The native Tasmanians +have already become extinct from sterility +caused by greatly changed diet and habits. If, +as Mr. Spencer teaches, continued culture and +brain-work will in time produce lessened fertility +or comparative sterility, we may yet have to be +careful that intellectual development does not +become a species of suicide, and that the +culture of the race does not mean its extinction—or +at least the extinction of those most +susceptible of culture.</p> + +<p>The reproductive elements are also disturbed +and modified in innumerable minor ways. +Changed conditions or habits tend to produce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +a general "plasticity" of type, the "indefinite +variability" thus caused being apparently irrelevant +to the change, if any, in the individual.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> A vast +number of variations of structure have certainly +arisen independently of similar parental modification +as the preliminary. Whatever first caused +these "spontaneous" congenital variations affected +the reproductive elements quite differently from +the individual. "When a new peculiarity first +appears we can never predict whether it will be +inherited." Many varieties of plants only keep +true from shoots, and not from seed, which is by +no means acted on in the same way as the +individual plant. Seeing that such plants have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +<i>two</i> reproductive types, both constant, it is evident +that these cannot both be modified in the +same way as the parent is modified. Many +parental modifications of structure and habit are +certainly not conveyed to neuter ants and bees; +other modifications, which are not seen in the +parents, being conveyed instead. Many other +circumstances tend to show that the individual +and the transmissible type are independent of +each other so far as modifications of parts are +concerned.</p> + +<p>It may seem natural to expect the transmission +of an enlarged muscle or a cultivated brain, +but, on the other hand, why should it be unreasonable +to expect that a modification which +was non-congenital in origin should still remain +non-congenital? Why should the non-transmission +of that which was not transmitted be surprising?</p> + +<p>Mr. Spencer thinks that the non-transmission +of acquired modifications is incongruous with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +great fact of atavism. But the great law of the +inheritance of that which is a development of +the transmissible type does not necessarily imply +the inheritance of modifications acquired by the +individual. Because English children may inherit +blue eyes and flaxen hair from their Anglo-Saxon +ancestors, it by no means follows that +an Englishman must inherit his father's sunburnt +complexion or smooth-shaven face. Of course +atavism ultimately adopts many instances of +revolt against its sway. But to assume that these +changes of type <i>follow</i> the personal change rather +than cause it, is to assume the whole question at +issue. That like begets like is true as a broad +principle, but it has many exceptions, and the +non-heredity of acquired characters may be one +of them.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Principles of Biology</i>, § 166, footnote. The English jaws are +somewhat lighter than the Australian jaws, though I could not +undertake to affirm that they are really shorter and smaller. In +the typical skulls depicted on p. 68 of the official guide to the +mammalian galleries at South Kensington, the typical Caucasian +jaw is very much larger than the Tasmanian jaw, although the +repulsively obtrusive teeth of the latter convey the contrary idea to +the imagination. Mr. Spencer's assumption that the ancient +Britons had large jaws appears to me erroneous. (See Professor +Rolleston's <i>Scientific Papers and Addresses</i>, i. p. 250.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Romanes, Galton, and Weismann have made great use of this +principle in explaining the diminution of disused organs. Weismann +has given it the name of <i>Panmixia</i>,—<i>all</i> individuals being +equally free to survive and commingle their variations, and not +merely selected or favoured individuals. See his <i>Essays on Heredity</i>, +&c., p. 90 (Clarendon Press).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Inclusive in each case of fixed strengthening wire weighing +about a sixteenth of an ounce or less.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> References of course are to <i>Factors of Organic Evolution</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> P. 13; and <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, February, 1888, p. 211.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Tomes's <i>Dental Surgery</i>, pp. 273-275. Tomes observes that +it is as yet uncertain in what way civilization predisposes to caries. +But he shows that caries is caused by the lime salts in the teeth +being attacked by <i>acids</i> from decomposing food in crevices, from +artificial drink such as cyder, from sugar, from medicine, and from +vitiated secretions of the mouth. It is evident that in civilized +races natural selection cannot so rigorously insist on sound teeth, +sound constitutions, and <i>protective alkaline</i> saliva. The reaction of +the civilized mouth is often acid, especially when the system is disordered +by dyspepsia or other diseases or forms of ill-health common +under civilization. The main supply of saliva, which is poured +from the cheeks opposite the upper molars, is often acid when in +small quantities. But the submaxillary and sub-lingual saliva +poured out at the foot of the lower incisors and held in the front +part of the jaw as in a spoon, "differs from parotid saliva in being +more alkaline" (Foster's <i>Text Book of Physiology</i>, p. 238; Tomes, +pp. 284, 685). One observer says that the reaction near the lower +incisors is "never acid." Hence (I conclude) the remarkable immunity +of the lower incisors and canines from decay, an immunity +which extends backwards in a lessening degree to the first and +second bicuspids. The close packing of the lower incisors may +assist by preventing the retention of decaying fragments of food. +Sexual selection may promote caries by favouring white teeth, which +are more prone to decay than yellow ones. Acid vitiation of the +mucus might account both for caries and (possibly) for the strange +infertility of some inferior races under civilization.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Origin of Species</i>, pp. 198-9; <i>Variation of Animals and Plants +under Domestication</i>, vol. ii. p. 328 footnote, also p. 206.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Mr. Spencer weakly argues that an advantageous attribute +(such as swiftness, keen sight, courage, sagacity, strength, &c.) +cannot be increased by natural selection unless it is "of greater importance, +for the time being, than most of the other attributes"; +and that natural selection cannot develop any one superiority when +animals are equally preserved by "other superiorities." But as +natural selection will simultaneously eliminate tendencies to slowness, +blindness, deafness, stupidity, &c., it <i>must</i> favour and improve +many points simultaneously, although no one of them may be of +greater importance than the rest. Of course the more complicated +the evolution the slower it will be; but time is plentiful, and +the amount of elimination is correspondingly vast.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> I venture to coin this concise term to signify <i>the direct inheritance +of the effects of use and disuse in kind</i>. Having a name for a +thing is highly convenient; it facilitates clearness and accuracy in +reasoning, and in this particular inquiry it may save some confusion +of thought from double or incomplete meanings in the shortened +phrases which would otherwise have to be employed to indicate this +great but nameless factor of evolution.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Origin of Species</i>, pp. 230-232; Bates's <i>Naturalist on the +Amazons</i>. Darwin is "surprised that no one has hitherto advanced +the demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known +doctrine of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck." As he +justly observes, "it proves that with animals, as with plants, any +amount of modification may be effected by the accumulation of +numerous, slight, spontaneous variations, which are in any way +profitable, without exercise or habit having been brought into play. +For peculiar habits confined to the workers or sterile females, however +long they might be followed, could not possibly affect the +males and fertile females, which alone leave any descendants." +Some slight modification of these remarks, however, may possibly +be needed to meet the case of "factitious queens," who (probably +through eating particles of the royal food) become capable of producing +a few male eggs.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Descent of Man</i>, pp. 573, 572, and footnote.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Contemporary Review</i>, December, 1875, p. 92.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> See <i>Origin of Species</i>, pp. 5-8. "Changed conditions induce +an almost indefinite amount of fluctuating variability, by which the +whole organization is rendered in some degree plastic" (<i>Descent of +Man</i>, p. 30). It also appears that "the nature of the conditions is +of subordinate importance in comparison with the nature of the organism +in determining each particular form of variation;—perhaps +of not more importance than the nature of the spark, by which a +mass of combustible matter is ignited, has in determining the nature +of the flames" (<i>Origin of Species</i>, p. 8).</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> +<h2>DARWIN'S EXAMPLES.</h2> + +<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> most formidable cases brought forward by +Mr. Spencer are from Darwin. I shall endeavour +to show, however, that Darwin was probably wrong +in retaining the older explanation of these facts, +and that the remains of the Lamarckian theory of +use-inheritance need not any longer encumber +the great explanation which has superseded that +fallacious and unproven theory and has rendered +it totally unnecessary. Meanwhile I think it is an +excellent sign that Mr. Spencer has to complain +that "Nowadays most naturalists are more Darwinian +than Mr. Darwin himself"—inasmuch as +they are inclined to say that there is "no proof" +that the effects of use and disuse are inherited.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +Other excellent signs are the recent issue of a translation +of Weismann's important essays on this and +kindred subjects,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> the strong support given to his +views by Wallace in his <i>Darwinism</i>, and their +adoption by Ray Lankester in his article on +Zoology in the latest edition of the <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i>. So sound and cautious an investigator +as Francis Galton had also in 1875 concluded +that "acquired modifications are barely, if at all, +<i>inherited</i>, in the correct sense of that word."</p> + +<p>Darwin's belief in the inheritance of acquired +characters was more or less hereditary in the +family. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, anticipated +Lamarck's views in his <i>Zoonomia</i>, +which Darwin at one time "greatly admired." +His father was "convinced" of the "inherited evil +effects of alcohol," and to this extent at least he +strongly impressed the belief in the inheritance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +of acquired characters upon his children's minds.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> +Darwin must also have been imbued with Lamarckian +ideas from other sources, although +Dr. Grant's enthusiastic advocacy entirely failed +to convert him to a belief in evolution.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> "Nevertheless," +he says, "it is probable that the hearing +rather early in life such views maintained and +praised may have favoured my upholding them +under a different form in my <i>Origin of Species</i>"—a +remark which refers to Lamarck's views on the +general doctrine of evolution, but might also prove +equally true if applied to Darwin's partial retention +of the Lamarckian explanation of that evolution. +Professor Huxley has pointed out that in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +Darwin's earlier sketch of his theory of evolution +(1844) he attached more weight to the inheritance +of acquired habits than he does in his +<i>Origin of Species</i> published fifteen years later.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> +He appears to have acquired the belief in early +life without first questioning and rigorously testing +it as he would have done had it originated +with himself. In later life it appeared to assist his +theory of evolution in minor points, and in +particular it appeared absolutely indispensable +to him as the <i>only</i> explanation of the diminution +of disused parts in cases where, as in domestic +animals, economy of growth seemed to be practically +powerless. He failed to adequately notice +the effect of panmixia, or the withdrawal of +selection, in causing or allowing degeneracy and +dwindling under disuse; and he hardly attached +sufficient importance to the fact that rudimentary +organs and other supposed effects of use or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +disuse are quite as marked features in neuter +insects which cannot transmit the effects of use +and disuse as they are in the higher animals.</p> + +<h3>REDUCED WINGS OF BIRDS OF OCEANIC ISLANDS.</h3> + +<p>Darwin himself has pointed out that the rudimentary +wings of island beetles, at first thought +to be due to disuse, are mainly brought about by +natural selection—the best-winged beetles being +most liable to be blown out to sea. But he says +that in birds of the oceanic islands "not persecuted +by any enemies, the reduction of their +wings has probably been caused by disuse." This +explanation may be as fallacious as it is acknowledged +to have been in the case of the island +beetles. According to Darwin's own views, +natural selection <i>must</i> at least have played an +important part in reducing the wings; for he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +holds that "natural selection is continually trying +to economize every part of the organization." +He says: "If under changed conditions of life +a structure, before useful, becomes less useful, its +diminution will be favoured, for it will profit the +individual not to have its nutriment wasted in +building up an useless structure.... Thus, as I +believe, natural selection will tend in the long +run to reduce any part of the organization, as +soon as it becomes, through changed habits, +superfluous."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> If, as Darwin powerfully urges +(and he here ignores his usual explanation), +ostriches' wings are insufficient for flight in consequence +of the economy enforced by natural +selection,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> why may not the reduced wings +of the dodo, or the penguin, or the apteryx, or of +the Cursores generally, be wholly attributed to +natural selection in favour of economy of material +and adaptation of parts to changed conditions?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +The great principle of economy is continually at +work shaping organisms, as sculptors shape statues, +by removing the superfluous parts; and a mere +glance at the forms of animals in general will +show that it is well-nigh as dominant and universal +a principle as is that of the positive +development of useful parts. Other causes, moreover +besides actual economy, would favour shorter +and more convenient wings on oceanic islands. +In the first place, birds that were somewhat weak +on the wing would be most likely to settle on an +island and stay there. Shortened wings would +then become advantageous because they would +restrain fatal migratory tendencies or useless +and perilous flights in which the birds that flew +furthest would be most often carried away by +storms and adverse winds. Reduced wings would +keep the birds near the shelter and the food +afforded by the island and its neighbourhood, +and in some cases would become adapted to act<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +as fins or flappers for swimming under water in +pursuit of fish.</p> + +<p>The reduced size of the wings of these island +birds is paralleled by the remarkable thinness, +&c., of the shell of the "gigantic land-tortoise" +of the Galapagos Islands. The changes seen in +the carapace can hardly have been brought about +by the inherited effects of special disuse. Why +then should not the reduction of equally useless, +more wasteful, and perhaps positively dangerous +wings be also due to an economy which has become +advantageous to bird and reptile alike through +the absence of the mammalian rivals whose places +they are evidently being modified to fill? The +<i>complete</i> loss of the wings in neuter ants and termites +can scarcely be due to the inherited effects +of disuse; and as natural selection has abolished +these wings in spite of the opposition of use-inheritance, +it must clearly be fully competent to +reduce wings without its aid. In considering the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +rudimentary wings of the apteryx, or of the moa, +emu, ostrich, &c., we must not forget the frequent +or occasional occurrence of hard seasons, and times +of drought and famine, when Nature eliminates +redundant, wasteful, and ill-adapted organisms in +so severe and wholesale a fashion. Where enemies +are absent there would be unrestrained multiplication, +and this would greatly increase the severity +of the competition for food, and so hasten the +elimination of disused and useless parts.</p> + +<h3>DROOPING EARS AND DETERIORATED +INSTINCTS.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Galton has pointed out that existing races +and existing organs are only kept at their present +high pitch of organic excellence by the stringent +and incessant action of natural or artificial +selection; and the simple relaxation or withdrawal +of such selective influences will almost necessarily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +result in a certain amount of deterioration, independently +even of the principle of economy.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> I +think that this cessation of a previous selective +process will account for the drooping—but <i>not +diminished</i>—ears of various domesticated animals +(human preference and increased weight evidently +aiding), and also for the inferior instincts seen in +them and in artificially-fed caterpillars of the silk-moth, +which now "often commit the strange mistake +of devouring the base of the leaf on which +they are feeding, and consequently fall down." +Anyhow, I fail to see that anything is proved by +this latter case, except that natural instinct may +be perverted or aborted under unnatural conditions +and a changed method of selection which +abolishes the powerful corrective formerly supplied +by natural selection.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p> +<h3>WINGS AND LEGS OF DUCKS AND FOWLS.</h3> + +<p>The reduced wings and enlarged legs of domesticated +ducks and fowls are attributed by Darwin and +Spencer to the inheritance of the effects of use and +disuse. But the inference by no means follows. +Natural selection would usually favour these adaptive +changes, and they would also have been aided +by an artificial selection which is often unconscious +or indirect. Birds with diminished power of flight +would be less difficult to keep and manage, and +in preserving and multiplying such birds man would +be unconsciously bringing about structural changes +which would easily be regarded as effects of +use and disuse. "About eighteen centuries ago +Columella and Varro speak of the necessity +of keeping ducks in netted enclosures like other +wild fowl, so that at this period there was danger +of their flying away."<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Is it not probable that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +best fliers would escape most frequently, or would +pine most if kept confined? On the other hand, +birds with lessened powers of flight would not be +eliminated as under natural conditions, but would +be favoured; and natural selection, together with +artificial selection of the most flourishing birds, +would thicken and strengthen the legs to meet +increased demands upon them.</p> + +<p>The diminution of the duck's wing is not great +even in the birds that "never fly," and from +this we must deduct the direct effect of disuse on +the individual during its lifetime. As Weismann +suggests, the <i>inherited</i> portion of the change could +only be ascertained by comparing the bones, &c., +of wild and tame ducks <i>similarly reared</i>. If +individual disuse diminished the weight of the +duck's wing-bones by 9 per cent. there would +be nothing left to account for.</p> + +<p>I suspect that investigation would reveal anomalies +inconsistent with the theory of use-inheritance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +Thus according to Darwin's tables +of comparative weights and measurements<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> the +leg-bones of the Penguin duck have slightly +diminished in length, although they have increased +39 per cent. in weight. Relatively to +the weight of the skeleton, the leg-bones have +shortened in the tame breeds of ducks by over +5 per cent. (and in two breeds by over 8 per cent.) +although they have increased more than 28 per +cent. in proportional weight.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> How can increased +use simultaneously shorten and thicken these bones? +If the relative shortening is attributed to a heavier<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +skeleton, then the apparently reduced weight of +the wing-bones is fully accounted for by the same +circumstance, and disuse has had no inherited +effect.</p> + +<p>Another strange circumstance is that the wing-bones +have diminished <i>in length only</i>. The shortening +is about 6 per cent. more than in the shortened +legs, and it amounts to 11 per cent. as compared +with the weight of the skeleton. Such a shortening +should represent a reduction of 29 per cent. in +weight, whereas the actual reduction in the weight +of the wing-bones relatively to the weight of the +skeleton is only 9 per cent. even in the breeds +that never fly. Independently of shortening, the +disused wing-bones have actually thickened or +increased in weight. In the Aylesbury duck +the disproportion caused by these conflicting +changes is so great that the wing-bones are +47 per cent. heavier than they should be if +their weight had varied proportionally with their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +length.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> The reduction in weight on which Darwin +relies seems to be entirely due to the shortening, +and this shortening appears to be irrelevant to +disuse, since the wings of the Call duck are similarly +shortened in their proportions by 12 per cent., +although this bird habitually flies to such an +extent that Darwin partly attributes the greatly +increased weight of its wing-bones to increased use +under domestication.</p> + +<p>We find that <i>all</i> the changes are in the +direction of shorter and thicker bones—a tendency +which must be largely dependent upon the suspension +of the rigorous elimination which keeps the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +bones of the wild duck <i>long and light</i>. The +used leg-bones and the disused wing-bones have +alike been shortened and thickened, though in +different proportions. Natural or artificial selection +might easily thicken legs without lengthening +them, or shorten wings without eliminating strong +heavy bones, but it can hardly be contended that +use-inheritance has acted in such conflicting ways. +The thickening of the wing-bones has actually +more than kept pace with any increase of weight +in the skeleton, in spite of the effect of individual +disuse and of the alleged cumulative effect +of ancestral disuse for hundreds of generations. +The case of the duck deserves special attention +as a crucial one, if only from the fact that in +this instance, and in this instance only, has Darwin +given the weights of the skeletons, thus furnishing +the means for a closer examination of his details +than is usually possible.</p> + +<p>If we ignore such factors as selection, panmixia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +correlation, and the effects of use and +disuse during lifetime, and still regard the case +of the domestic duck as a valid proof of the +inheritance of the effects of use and disuse, we +must also accept it as an equally valid proof that +the effects of use and disuse are <i>not</i> inherited. +Nay, we may even have to admit that, in two +points out of four, the <i>inherited</i> effect of use and +disuse on successive generations is exactly opposite +to the immediate effect on the individual.</p> + +<p>Among fowls the wing-bones have lost much +in weight but little or nothing in length—which is +the reverse of what has occurred in ducks, although +disuse is alleged to be the common cause in both +cases. Some of the fowls which fly least have +their wing-bones as long as ever. In the case of +the Silk and Frizzled fowls—ancient breeds which +"cannot fly at all"—and in that of the Cochins, +which "can hardly fly up to a low perch," Darwin +observes "how truly the proportions of an organ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +may be inherited although not fully exercised +during many generations."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> In four out of twelve +breeds the wing-bones had become slightly heavier +relatively to the leg-bones. Do not these facts +tend to show that the changes in fowls' wings +are due to fluctuating variability and selective +influences rather than to a general law whereby the +effects of disuse are cumulatively inherited?</p> + +<h3>PIGEONS' WINGS.</h3> + +<p>Concerning pigeons' wings Darwin says: "As +fancy pigeons are generally confined in aviaries +of moderate size, and as even when not confined +they do not search for their own food, they must +during many generations have used their wings +incomparably less than the wild rock-pigeon ... but +when we turn to the wings we find what at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +first appears a wholly different and unexpected +result."<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> This unexpected increase in the spread of +the wings from tip to tip is due to the feathers, +which have lengthened in spite of disuse. Excluding +the feathers, the wings were shorter in seventeen +instances, and longer in eight. But as artificial +selection has lengthened the wings in some +instances, why may it not have shortened +them in others? Wings with shortened bones +would fold up more neatly than the long wings +of the Carrier pigeon for instance, and so might +unconsciously be favoured by fanciers. The +selection of elegant birds with longer necks or +bodies would cause a relative reduction in the +wings—as with the Pouter, where the wings +have been greatly lengthened but not so +much as the body.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Slender bodies, too, and the +lessened divergence of the furculum,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +slightly diminish the spread of the wings, and so +would affect the measurements taken. As the +wing-bones, moreover, are to some extent correlated +with the beak and the feet, the artificial +selection of shortened beaks might tend to shorten +the wing as well as the feet. Under these +circumstances how can we be sure of the actual +efficacy of use-inheritance? Surely selection is as +fully competent to effect slight changes in the +direction of use-inheritance as it undoubtedly is +to effect great changes in direct opposition to that +alleged factor of evolution.</p> + +<h3>SHORTENED BREAST-BONE IN PIGEONS.</h3> + +<p>The shortening of the sternum in pigeons is attributed +to disuse of the flight muscles attached to +it. The bone is only shortened by a third of an +inch, but this represents a very remarkable reduction +in proportional length, which Darwin estimates at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> +from one-seventh to one-eighth, or over 13 per +cent. This marked reduction, too, quite unlike +the slight reduction of the wing-bones to which +the other ends of the muscles are attached, was +universal in the eleven specimens measured by +Darwin; and the bone, though acknowledged +to have been modified by artificial selection +in some breeds, is not so open to observation as +wings or legs. Even, however, if this relative +shortening of the sternum remained otherwise +inexplicable, it might still be as irrelevant to use +and disuse as is the fact that "many breeds" +of fancy pigeons have lost a rib, having only +seven where the ancestral rock-pigeon has eight.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> +But the excessive reduction in the sternum is +far from being inexplicable. In the first place +Darwin has somewhat over-estimated it. Instead +of comparing the deficiency of length with the +increased length which <i>should</i> have been acquired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +(since the pigeons have increased in average size) +he compares it with the length of the breast-bone +in the rock-pigeon.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> By this method if a +pigeon had doubled in dimensions while its +breast-bone remained unaltered, the reduction +would be put down as 100 per cent., whereas +obviously the true reduction would be one-half, +or 50 per cent. of what the bone <i>should be</i>. +Avoiding this error and a minor fallacy besides, +a sound estimate reduces the supposed reduction +of 13 or 14 per cent. to one of 11·7 per cent., which +is still of course a considerable diminution.</p> + +<p>Part of this reduction must be due to the direct +effect of disuse during the lifetime of the individual. +Another and perhaps very considerable +part of the relative change must be attributed +to the lengthening of the neck or body by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +artificial selection, or to other modifications of +shape and proportion effected directly or indirectly +by the same cause.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> The reduction is greatest in +the Pouter (18½ per cent.) and in the Pied Scanderoon +(17½ per cent.). In the former the body has +been greatly elongated by artificial selection and +three or four additional vertebræ have been acquired +in the hinder part of the body.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> In the latter a +long neck increases the length of the bird, and so +causes, or helps to cause, the relative shortening of +the breast-bone. In the English Carrier—which +experiences the effects of disuse, as it is too +valuable to be flown—the relative reduction of +11 per cent. is apparently more than accounted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +for by the "elongated neck." The Dragon also +has a long neck. In the Pouter, although the +breast-bone has been shortened by 18½ per +cent. relatively to the length of the body, it +has <i>lengthened</i> by 20 per cent. relatively to +the <i>bulk</i> of the body.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Darwin forgot to ask +whether allowance must not be made for a +frequent, or perhaps general, elongation of the +neck and the hinder part of the body, and the +relative shortening or the throwing forward of the +central portion containing the ribs (frequently +one less in number) and the sternum. The whole +body of the pigeon is so much under the control +of artificial selection, that every precaution must +be taken to guard against such possible sources of +error.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p><p>Under domestication there would be a suspension +of the previous elimination of reduced breast-bones +by natural selection (Weismann's panmixia), +and a diminution of the parts concerned in flying +might even be favoured, as lessened powers of +<i>continuous</i> flight would prevent pigeons from straying +too far, and would fit them for domestication +or confinement. Such causes might reduce some of +the less observed parts affected by flying, while +still leaving the wing of full size for occasional +flight, or to suit the requirements of the pigeon-fanciers. +A change might thus be commenced +like that seen in the rudimentary keel of the +sternum in the owl-parrot of New Zealand, +which has lost the power of flight although +still retaining fairly-developed wings.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> +<h3>SHORTENED FEET IN PIGEONS.</h3> + +<p>Darwin thinks it highly probable that the short +feet of most breeds of pigeons are due to lessened +use, though he owns that the effects of correlation +with the shortened beak are more plainly shown +than the effects of disuse.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> But why need the +inherited effects of disuse be called in to explain +an average reduction of some 5 per cent., when +Darwin's measurements show that in the breeds +where long beaks are favoured the principle of +correlation between these parts has lengthened +the foot by 13 per cent. in spite of disuse?</p> + +<h3>SHORTENED LEGS OF RABBITS.</h3> + +<p>In the case of the domestic rabbit Darwin +notices that the bones of the legs have (relatively) +become shorter by an inch and a half. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +as the leg-bones have <i>not</i> diminished in relative +weight,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> they must clearly have grown <i>thicker</i> +or denser. If disuse has shortened them, as +Darwin supposes, why has it also thickened them? +The ears and the tail have been lengthened in +spite of disuse. Why then may not the ungainly +hind-legs have been shortened by human preference +independently of the inherited effects of +disuse? By relying on apparently favourable +instances and neglecting the others it would be +easy to arrive at all manner of unsound conclusions. +We might thus become convinced that vessels +tend to sail northwards, or that a pendulum +oscillates more often in one direction than in +the other. It must not be forgotten that it +would be easy to cite an enormous number of +cases which are in direct conflict with the +supposed law of use-inheritance.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> +<h3>BLIND CAVE-ANIMALS.</h3> + +<p>Weak or defective eyesight is by no means +rare as a spontaneous variation in animals, +"the great French veterinary Huzard going +so far as to say that a blind race [of horses] +could soon be formed." Natural selection evolves +blind races whenever eyes are useless or +disadvantageous, as with parasites. This may +apparently be done independently of the effects +of disuse, for certain neuter ants have eyes which +are reduced to a more or less rudimentary +condition, and neuter termites are blind as well +as wingless. In one species of ant (<i>Eciton vastator</i>) +the sockets have disappeared as well as the eyes. +In deep caves not only would natural selection +cease to maintain good eyesight but it would +persistently favour blindness—or the entire +removal of the eye when greatly exposed, as in +the cave-crab—and as Dr. Ray Lankester has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> +indicated,<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> there would have been a previous +selection of animals which through spontaneous +weakness, sensitiveness, or other affection of the +eye found refuge and preservation in the cave, +and a subsequent selection of the descendants +whose fitness for relative darkness led them +deeper into the cave or prevented them from +straying back to the light with its various +dangers and severer competition. Panmixia, +however, as Weismann has shown, would probably +be the most important factor in causing blindness.</p> + +<h3>INHERITED HABITS.</h3> + +<p>Darwin says: "A horse is trained to certain +paces, and the colt inherits similar consensual +movements."<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> But selection of the constitutional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +tendency to these paces, and imitation of the mother +by the colt, may have been the real causes. The +evidence, to be satisfactory, should show that +such influences were excluded. Men acquire +proficiency in swimming, waltzing, walking, smoking, +languages, handicrafts, religious beliefs, &c., +but the children only appear to inherit the innate +abilities or constitutional proclivities of their +parents. Even the songs of birds, including +their call-notes, are no more inherited than is +language by man (<i>Descent of Man</i>, p. 86). They +are learned from the parent. Nestlings which +acquire the song of a distinct species, "teach +and transmit their new song to their offspring." +If use-inheritance has not fixed the song of birds, +why should we suppose that in a single +generation it has transmitted a newly-taught +method of walking or trotting?</p> + +<p>It is alleged that dogs inherit the intelligence +acquired by association with man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +and that retrievers inherit the effects of their +training.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> But selection and imitation are so +potent that the additional hypothesis of use-inheritance +seems perfectly superfluous. Where +intelligence is not highly valued and carefully +promoted by selection, the intelligence derivable +from association with man does <i>not</i> appear +to be inherited. Lap-dogs, for instance, are often +remarkably stupid.</p> + +<p>Darwin also instances the inheritance of dexterity +in seal-catching as a case of use-inheritance.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> +But this is amply explained by the ordinary +law of heredity. All that is needed is that the +son shall inherit the suitable faculties which the +father inherited before him.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p> +<h3>TAMENESS OF RABBITS.</h3> + +<p>Darwin holds that in some cases selection alone +has modified the instincts and dispositions of +domesticated animals, but that in most cases +selection and the inheritance of acquired habits +have concurred in effecting the change. "On the +other hand," he says, "habit alone in some cases +has sufficed; hardly any animal is more difficult +to tame than the young of the wild rabbit; +scarcely any animal is tamer than the young of +the tame rabbit; but I can hardly suppose that +domestic rabbits have often been selected for +tameness alone; so that we must attribute at least +the greater part of the inherited change from +extreme wildness to extreme tameness to habit +and long-continued close confinement."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p> + +<p>But there are strong, and to me irresistible, +arguments to the contrary. I think that the following<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +considerations will show that the greater +part, if not the whole, of the change must be +attributed to selection rather than to the direct +inheritance of acquired habit.</p> + +<p>(1) For a period which may cover thousands of +generations, there has been an entire cessation of +the natural selection which maintains the wildness +(or excessive fear, caution, activity, &c.) so indispensably +essential for preserving defenceless wild +rabbits of all ages from the many enemies that +prey upon them.</p> + +<p>(2) During this same extensive period of time +man has usually killed off the wildest and bred +from the tamest and most manageable. To some +extent he has done this consciously. "It is very +conducive to successful breeding to keep only such +as are quiet and tractable," says an authority on +rabbits,<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> and he enjoins the selection of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +handsomest and <i>best-tempered</i> does to serve as +breeders. To a still greater extent man has +favoured tameness unconsciously and indirectly. +He has systematically selected the largest and +most prolific animals, and has thus doubled the +size and the fertility of the domestic rabbit. In +consciously selecting the largest and most flourishing +individuals and the best and most prolific +mothers, he <i>must</i> have unconsciously selected +those rabbits whose relative <i>tameness</i> or placidity +of disposition rendered it possible for them to +flourish and to produce and rear large and thriving +families, instead of fretting and pining as the +wilder captives would do. When we consider +how exceedingly delicate and easily disturbed yet +all-important a function is that of maternity in +the continually breeding rabbit, we see that the +tamest and the least terrified would be the most +successful mothers, and so would continually be +selected, although man cared nothing for the tameness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +in itself. The tamest mothers would also +be less liable to neglect or devour their offspring, +as rabbits commonly do when their young are +handled too soon, or even when merely frightened +by mice, &c., or disturbed by changed surroundings.</p> + +<p>(3) We must remember the extraordinary fecundity +of the rabbit and the excessive amount of +elimination that consequently takes place either +naturally or artificially. Where nature preserved +only the wildest, man has preserved the tamest. +If there is any truth in the Darwinian theory, this +thorough and long-continued reversal of the selective +process <i>must</i> have had a powerful effect. +Why should it not be amply sufficient to account +for the tameness and mental degeneracy of the +rabbit without the aid of a factor which can readily +be shown to be far weaker in its normal action +than either natural or artificial selection? Why +may not the tameness of the rabbit be transferred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +to the group of cases in which Darwin holds that +"habit has done nothing," and selection has done +all?</p> + +<p>(4) If use-inheritance has tamed the rabbit, why +are the bucks still so mischievous and unruly? +Why is the Angora breed the only one in which +the males show no desire to destroy the young? +Why, too, should use-inheritance be so much more +powerful in the rabbit than with other animals +which are far more easily tamed in the first instance? +Wild young rabbits when domesticated +"remain unconquerably wild," and, although they +may be kept alive, they pine and "rarely come to +any good." Yet the animal which <i>acquires</i> least +tameness—or apparently, indeed, none at all—inherits +most! It appears, in fact, to inherit that +which it cannot acquire—a circumstance which +indicates the selection of spontaneous variations +rather than the inheritance of changed habits. +Such variations occasionally occur in animals in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +marked degree. Of a litter of wolf-cubs, all +brought up in the same way, "one became tame +and gentle like a dog, while the others preserved +their natural savagery." Is it not probable that +permanent domestication was rendered possible by +the inevitable selection of spontaneous variations in +this direction? The <i>excessive</i> tameness, too, of the +young rabbit, while easily explicable as a result of +unconscious selection, is not easily explained as a +result of acquired habit. No particular care is +taken to tame or teach or domesticate rabbits. +They are bred for food, or for profit or appearance, +and they are left to themselves most of their +time. As Sir J. Sebright notices with some surprise, +the domestic rabbit "is not often visited, +and seldom handled, and yet it is always tame."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> +<h3>MODIFICATIONS OBVIOUSLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO +SELECTION.</h3> + +<p>Innumerable modifications in accordance with +altered use or disuse, such as the enlarged udders +of cows and goats, and the diminished lungs and +livers in highly bred animals that take little exercise, +can be readily and fully explained as depending +on selection. As the fittest for the natural +or artificial requirements will be favoured, natural +or artificial selection may easily enlarge organs +that are increasingly used and economize in those +that are less needed. I therefore see no necessity +whatever for calling in the aid of use-inheritance +as Darwin does, to account for enlarged udders, or +diminished lungs, or the thick arms and thin legs +of canoe Indians, or the enlarged chests of mountaineers, +or the diminished eyes of moles, or the +lost feet of certain beetles, or the reduced wings of +logger-headed ducks, or the prehensile tails of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +monkeys, or the displaced eyes of soles, or the +altered number of teeth in plaice, or the increased +fertility of domesticated animals, or the shortened +legs and snouts of pigs, or the shortened intestines +of tame rabbits, or the lengthened intestines of +domestic cats, &c.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> Changed habits and the requisite +change of structure will usually be favoured +by natural selection; for habit, as Darwin says, +"almost implies that some benefit great or +small is thus derived."</p> + +<h3>SIMILAR EFFECTS OF NATURAL SELECTION AND +USE-INHERITANCE.</h3> + +<p>Here we perceive a difficulty which will equally +trouble those who affirm use-inheritance and those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +who deny. Broadly speaking, the adaptive effects +ascribed to use-inheritance coincide with the effects +of natural selection. The individual adaptability +(as shown in the thickening of skin, fur, muscle, +&c., under the stimulus of friction, cold, use, &c.) +is identical in kind and direction with the racial +adaptability under natural selection. Consequently +the alleged inheritance of the advantageous effects +of use and disuse cannot readily be distinguished +from the similarly beneficial effects of natural +selection. The indisputable fact that natural +selection imitates or simulates the beneficial +effects ascribed to use-inheritance may be the chief +source and explanation of a belief which may prove +to be thoroughly fallacious. A similar simulation +of course occurs under domestication, where natural +selection is partly replaced by artificial selection +of the best adapted and therefore most flourishing +animals, while in disused parts panmixia or the +comparative cessation of selection will aid or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> +replace "economy of growth" in causing diminution.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p> + +<h3>INFERIORITY OF SENSES IN EUROPEANS.</h3> + +<p>"The inferiority of Europeans, in comparison +with savages, in eyesight and in the other senses," +is attributed to "the accumulated and transmitted +effect of lessened use during many generations."<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> +But why may we not attribute it to the slackened +and diverted action of the natural selection which +keeps the senses so keen in some savage races?</p> + +<h3>SHORT-SIGHT IN WATCHMAKERS AND +ENGRAVERS.</h3> + +<p>Darwin notices that watchmakers and engravers +are liable to be short-sighted, and that short-sight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +and long-sight certainly tend to be inherited.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> But +we must be careful not to beg the question at issue +by assuming that the frequent heredity of short +sight necessarily covers the heredity of artificially-produced +short-sight. Elsewhere, however, Darwin +states more decisively that "there is ground for +believing that it may often originate in causes +acting on the individual affected, and may thence-forward +become transmissible."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> This impression +may arise (1) from the facts of ordinary heredity—the +ancestral liability being excited in father and +son by similar artificial habits, such as reading, and +viewing objects closely as among watchmakers and +engravers—or by constitutional deterioration from +indoor life, &c., acting upon a constitutional liability +of the eye to the "something like inflammation +of the coats, under which they yield" and so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +cause shortness of sight by altering the spherical +shape of the eye-ball. (2) Panmixia, or the suspension +of natural selection, together with altered +habits, will account for an increase of short-sight +among the population generally. (3) Long-sighted +people could not work at watchmaking +and engraving so comfortably and advantageously +as at other occupations, and hence would be less +likely to take to such callings.</p> + +<h3>LARGER HANDS OF LABOURERS' INFANTS.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></h3> + +<p>These are best explained as the result of natural +selection and of the diminution of the hand by +sexual selection in the gentry. If the larger hands +of labourers' infants are really due to the inherited +effects of ancestral use, why does the development +occur so early in life, instead of only at a corresponding +period, as is the rule? During the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +few years of its life, at least, the labourer's infant +does no more work than the gentleman's child. +Why are not the effects of this disuse inherited +by the labourer's infant? If the enlargement of the +infant's hand illustrates the transference of a +character gained later in life, it is evident that the +transference must take place in spite of the inherited +effects of disuse.</p> + +<h3>THICKENED SOLE IN INFANTS.</h3> + +<p>Darwin also attributes the thickened sole in infants, +"long before birth," to "the inherited effects +of pressure during a long series of generations."<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> +But disuse should make the infant's sole <i>thin</i>, and +it is this thinness that should be inherited. If we +suppose the inheritance of the thickened soles of +later life to be transferred to an earlier period, we +have the anomaly of the inherited effects of disuse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +at that earlier period being overpowered by the +untimely inheritance of the effects of use at another. +On the other hand, it is clear that natural selection +would favour thickened soles for walking on, and +might also promote an early development which +would ensure their being ready in good time for +actual use; for variations in the direction of delay +would be cut off, while variations in the other +direction would be preserved. Anyhow, the mere +transference of a character to an earlier period is +no proof of use-inheritance. The real question is +whether the thickened sole was gained by natural +selection or by the inherited effects of pressure, and +the mere transference or hastened appearance of +the thickening does not in any degree solve this +question. It merely excludes the effect of disuse +during lifetime, and thus presents a fallacious appearance +of being decisive. The thickened sole of +the unborn infant, however, like the lanugo or +hairy covering, is probably a result of the direct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +inheritance of ancestral stages of evolution, of +which the embryo presents a condensed epitome. +While the relative thinness of the infant's sole +might be pointed to as the effect of <i>disuse</i> during a +long series of generations, its thickness is rather an +illustration of atavism still resisting the effects of +long-continued disuse. There is nothing to show +that the inheritable portion of the full original +thickness was not gained by natural selection +rather than by the directly inherited effect of use; +and the latter, being cumulative and indiscriminative +in its action, would apparently have made +the sole very much thicker and harder than it +is. If natural selection were not supreme in such +cases, how could we account for the effects of +pressure resulting in hard hoofs in some cases and +only soft pads in others?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> +<h3>A SOURCE OF MENTAL CONFUSION.</h3> + +<p>Of course in a certain sense this thickening +of the sole has resulted from use. In one sense +or other, most—or perhaps all—of the results +of natural selection are inherited effects of use +or disuse. Natural selection preserves that +which is of use and which is used, while it +eliminates that which is useless and is not used. +The most confident assertions of the effects of use +and disuse in modifying the heritable type, appear +to rest on this indefeasible basis. Darwin's statements +concerning the effects of use and disuse in +evolution can frequently be read in two senses. +They often command assent as undeniable truisms +as they stand, but are of course written in another +and more debatable sense. Thus in the case of the +shortened wings and thickened legs of the domestic +duck, I believe equally with Darwin and Spencer +that "no one will dispute that they have resulted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +from the lessened use of the wings and the increased +use of the legs." "Use" is at bottom the +determining circumstance in evolution generally. +The trunk of the elephant, the fin of the fish, the +wing of the bird, the cunning hand of man and his +complicated brain—and, in short, all organs and +faculties whatsoever—can only have been moulded +and developed by use—by usefulness and by using—but +not necessarily by use-inheritance, not necessarily +by directly inherited effects of use or +disuse of parts in the individual. So, too, reduced +or rudimentary organs are due to disuse, but it by +no means follows that the diminution is caused by +any direct tendency to the inheritance of the effects +of disuse in the individual. The effects of natural +selection are commonly expressible as effects of use +and disuse, just as adaptation in nature is expressible +in the language of teleology. But use-inheritance +is no more proven by one of these necessary +coincidences than special design is by the other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +The inevitable simulation of use-inheritance may +be entirely deceptive.</p> + +<p>Darwin thinks that "there can be no doubt that +use in our domestic animals has strengthened and +enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished +them; and that such modifications are inherited." +Undoubtedly "such" or <i>similar</i> modifications have +often been inherited, but how can Darwin possibly +tell that they are not due to the simulation of use-inheritance +by natural or artificial selection acting +upon general variability? Of the inevitability of +selection and of its generally adaptive tendencies +"there can be no doubt," and panmixia would tend +to reduce disused parts; so that there <i>must always</i> +remain grave doubts of the alleged inheritance of +the similar effects of use and disuse, unless we can +accomplish the extremely difficult feat of excluding +both natural and artificial selection as causes +of enlargement, and panmixia and selection as +causes of dwindling.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p> +<h3>WEAKNESS OF USE-INHERITANCE.</h3> + +<p>Use-inheritance is normally so weak that it +appears to be quite helpless when opposed to any +other factor of evolution. Natural selection evolves +and maintains the instincts of ants and termites +in spite of use-inheritance to a more wonderful +degree than it evolves the instincts of almost any +other animal with the fullest help of use-inheritance. +It develops seldom-used horns or natural +armour just as readily as constantly-used hoofs or +teeth. Sexual selection evolves elaborate structures +like the peacock's tail in spite of disuse and natural +selection combined. Artificial selection appears to +enlarge or diminish used parts or disused parts with +equal facility. The assistance of use-inheritance +seems to be as unnecessary as its opposition is +ineffective.</p> + +<p>The alleged inheritance of the effects of use +and disuse in our domestic animals must be very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +slow and slight.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> Darwin tells us that "there is +no good evidence that this ever follows in the +course of a single generation." "Several generations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +must be subjected to changed habits for any +appreciable result."<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> What does this mean? +One of two things. Either the tendency is +very weak, or it is non-existent. If it is so +weak that we cannot detect its alleged effects +till several generations have elapsed, during which +time the more powerful agency of selection has +been at work, how are we to distinguish the effects +of the minor factor from that of the major? Are +we to conclude that use-inheritance <i>plus</i> selection +will modify races, just as Voltaire firmly held that +incantations, together with sufficient arsenic, would +destroy flocks of sheep? Is it not a significant +fact that the alleged instances of use-inheritance +so often prove to be self-conflicting in their +details?</p> + +<p>For satisfactory proof of the prevalence of a +law of use-inheritance we require normal instances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +where selection is clearly inadequate to produce +the change, or where it is scarcely allowed +time or opportunity to act, as in the immediate +offspring of the modified individual. Of the +first kind of cases there seems to be a plentiful +lack. Of the latter kind, according to Darwin, +there appears to be none—a circumstance which +contrasts strangely and suspiciously with the +many decisive cases in which variation from +unknown causes has been inherited most strikingly +in the immediate offspring. It must be +expected, indeed, that among these innumerable +cases some will accidentally mimic the +alleged effects of use-inheritance.</p> + +<p>If Darwin had felt certain that the effects +of habit or use tended in any marked degree +to be conveyed directly and cumulatively to +succeeding generations, he could hardly have +given us such cautious, half-hearted encouragement +of good habits as the following:—"It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +is not improbable that after long practice virtuous +tendencies may be inherited." "Habits, moreover +followed during many generations probably tend +to be inherited."<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> This is probable, independently +of use-inheritance. The "many generations" +specified or implied, will allow time for the +play of selective as well as of cumulatively-educative +influences. There must apparently +be a constitutional or inheritable predisposition +or fitness for the habits spoken of, which otherwise +would scarcely be continued for many +generations, except by the favourably-varying +branches of a family: which again is selection +rather than use-inheritance.</p> + +<p>Where is the necessity for even the remains +of the Lamarckian doctrine of inherited habit? +Seeing how powerful the general principle of +selection has shown itself in cases where use-inheritance +could have given no aid or must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +even have offered its most strenuous opposition, +why should it not equally be able to develop used +organs or repress disused organs or faculties +without the assistance of a relatively weak ally? +Selection evolved the remarkable protective +coverings of the armadillo, turtle, crocodile, porcupine, +hedgehog, &c.; it formed alike the rose +and its thorn, the nut and its shell; it developed +the peacock's tail and the deer's antlers, the +protective mimicry of various insects and +butterflies, and the wonderful instincts of the +white ants; it gave the serpent its deadly +poison and the violet its grateful odour; it +painted the gorgeous plumage of the Impeyan +pheasant and the beautiful colours and decorations +of countless birds and insects and flowers. +These, and a thousand other achievements, it +has evidently accomplished without the help of +use-inheritance. Why should it be thought incapable +of reducing a pigeon's wing or enlarging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +a duck's leg? Why should it be credited with the +help of an officious ally in effecting comparatively +slight changes, when great and +striking modifications are effected without any +such aid?</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Weismann's <i>Essays on Heredity</i>, &c. Clarendon Press, +1889.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Life and Letters</i>, i. p. 16. Darwin's reverence for his father +"was boundless and most touching. He would have wished to +judge everything else in the world dispassionately, but anything his +father had said was received with almost implicit faith; ... he +hoped none of his sons would ever believe anything because he said +it, unless they were themselves convinced of its truth—a feeling in +striking contrast with his own manner of faith" (<i>Life and Letters</i>, +i. pp. 10, 11).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, i. p. 38.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Life and Letters</i>, ii. p. 14.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Origin of Species</i>, pp. 117, 118.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 180.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>Contemporary Review</i>, December, 1875, pp. 89, 93.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 292.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 299-301.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> To keep pace with this lateral increase in weight, the leg-bones +should have lengthened considerably so that their total deficiency +in proportional length is 17 per cent.,—a changed proportion which +being <i>linear</i> is more excessive than the increase of weight by +28 per cent. So marked is the effect of the combined thickening +and shortening that in the Aylesbury breed—which is the most +typically representative one—the leg-bones have become 70 per cent. +heavier than they should be if their thickness had continued to be +proportional to their length.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> This excessive thickening under disuse appears to be due partly +to a positive lateral enlargement or increase of proportional weight +of about 7½ per cent., and partly to a shortening of about 15 per +cent. Carefully calculated, the reduction of the weight of the wing-bones +in this breed is only 8·3 per cent. relatively to the whole +skeleton, or only 5 per cent. relatively to the skeleton <i>minus</i> legs +and wings. The latter method is the more correct, since the excessive +weight of the leg-bones increases the weight of the skeleton +more than the diminished weight of the wing-bones reduces it.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 284.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. +184, 185.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, i. 144, 145.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, i. 185.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 184. +I suspect that Darwin was in poor health when he wrote this page. +He nods at least four times in it. Twice he speaks of "twelve" +breeds where he obviously should have said eleven.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> If a prominent breast is admired and selected by fanciers, the +sternum might shorten in assuming a more forward and vertical +position. If the shortening of the sternum is entirely due to disuse, +it seems strange that Darwin has not noticed any similar shortening +in the sternum of the duck. But selection has not tended to make +the duck elegant, or "pigeon-breasted"; it has enlarged the abdominal +sack instead, besides allowing the addition of an extra rib in +various cases.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, 144, 175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. +179.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> In the six largest breeds the shortening of the sternum is nearly +twice as great as in the three smaller breeds which remain nearest +the rock-pigeon in size. We can hardly suppose that use-inheritance +especially affects the eight breeds that have varied most in size. +If we exclude these, there is only a total shortening of 7 per cent. to +be accounted for.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 183, +186.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 130, +135; ii. 288.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, article "Zoology."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. +367.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. 367. +Why then does the cheetah inherit ancestral habits so inadequately +that it is useless for the chase unless it has first learned to +hunt for itself before being captured? (ii. 133).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Descent of Man</i>, p. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Origin of Species</i>, pp. 210, 211.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> E. S. Delamer on <i>Pigeons and Rabbits</i>, pp. 132, 103. For +other points referred to, see pages 133, 102, 100, 95, 131.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Origin of Species</i>, pp. 188, 110; <i>Descent of Man</i>, pp. 32-35; +<i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. 289, +293. Use or disuse during lifetime of course co-operates, and in +some cases, as in that of the canoe Indians, may be the principal +or even perhaps the <i>sole</i> cause of the change.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> For the importance of panmixia as invalidating Darwin's +strongest evidence for use-inheritance—namely, that drawn from the +effects of disuse in highly-fed domestic animals where there is +supposed to be no economy of growth—see Professor Romanes on +Panmixia, <i>Nature</i>, April 3, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Descent of Man</i>, p. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>Descent of Man</i>, p. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i., +453.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Descent of Man</i>, p. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Descent of Man</i>, p. 33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Wallace shows that the changes in our domestic animals, if +spread over the thousands of years since the animals were first +tamed, must be extremely insignificant in each generation, and he +concludes that such infinitesimal effects of use and disuse would be +swallowed up by the far greater effects of variation and selection +(<i>Darwinism</i>, p. 436). Professor Romanes has replied to him in the +<i>Contemporary Review</i> (August 1889), showing that this is no disproof +of the existence of the minor factor, inasmuch as slight changes in +each generation need not necessarily be matters of life and death to +the individual, although their cumulative development by use-inheritance +might eventually become of much service. But selection +would favour spontaneous variations of a similarly serviceable +character. The slightest tendency to eliminate the extreme +variations in either direction would proportionally modify the +average in a breed. Use-inheritance appears to be so relatively +weak a factor that probably neither proof nor disproof of its +existence can ever be given, owing to the practical impossibility of +disentangling its effects (if any) from the effects of admittedly far +more powerful factors which often act in unsuspected ways. Thus +wild ducklings, which can easily be reared by themselves, invariably +"die off" if reared with tame ones (<i>Variation</i>, &c., i. 292, ii. 219). +They cannot get their fair share in the competition for food, and are +completely eliminated. Professor Romanes fully acknowledges +that there is the "gravest possible doubt" as to the transmission of +the effects of disuse (Letter on Panmixia, <i>Nature</i>, March 13, 1890).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. +287-289.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <i>Descent of Man</i>, pp. 612, 131.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p> +<h2>INHERITED INJURIES.</h2> + +<h3>INHERITED MUTILATIONS.</h3> + +<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> almost universal <i>non-inheritance</i> of mutilations +seems to me a far more valid argument +<i>against</i> a general law of modification-inheritance +than the few doubtful or abnormal cases of +such inheritance can furnish in its favour. +No inherited effect has been produced by the +docking of horses' tails for many generations, or +by a well-known mutilation which has been +practised by the Hebrew race from time immemorial. +As lost or mutilated parts are reproduced +in offspring independently of the existence of +those parts in the parent, there is the less reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +to suppose that the particular condition of +parental parts transmits itself, or tends to +transmit itself, to the offspring. So unsatisfactory +is the argument derivable from inherited +mutilations that Mr. Spencer does not mention +them at all, and Darwin has to attribute them +to a special cause which is independent of any +general theory of use-inheritance.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p> + +<p>Darwin's most striking case—and to my mind +the only case of any importance—is that of Brown-Séquard's +epileptic guinea-pigs, which inherited the +mutilated condition of parents who had gnawed +off their own gangrenous toes when anæsthetic +through the sciatic nerve having been divided.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> +Darwin also mentions a cow that lost a horn by +accident, followed by suppuration, and subsequently +produced three calves which had on the +same side of the head, instead of a horn, a +bony lump attached merely to the skin. Such +cases may seem to prove that mutilation +<i>associated with morbid action</i> is occasionally +inherited or repeated with a promptitude and +thoroughness that contrast most strikingly with +the imperceptible nature of the immediate inheritance +of the effects of use and disuse; but they +by no means prove that mutilation in general +is inheritable, and they are absolutely no proof +whatever of a <i>normal</i> and non-pathological tendency +to the inheritance of acquired characters. +Those who accept Darwin's special explanation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +of the supposed inheritance of mutilations, ought +to notice that his explanation applies equally well +under a theory which is strongly adverse to +use-inheritance—namely, Galton's idea of the +sterilization and complete "using up" of otherwise +reproductive matter in the growth and +maintenance of the personal structure.</p> + +<p>Darwin's explanation of inherited mutilations—which, +as he notes, occur "especially or perhaps +exclusively" when the injury has been followed +by disease<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>—is that all the representative +gemmules which would develop or repair or +reproduce the injured part are attracted to the +diseased surface during the reparative process +and are there destroyed by the morbid action.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> +Hence they cannot reproduce the part in offspring. +This explanation by no means implies +that mutilation would <i>usually</i> affect the offspring. +On the contrary, in all ordinary cases of mutilation +the purely atavistic elements or gemmules would +be set free from any modifying influence of the +non-existent or mutilated part. The gemmules—as +in Galton's theory of heredity and with neuter +insects—might be perfectly independent of pangenesis +and the normal inheritance of acquired +characters. Such self-multiplying gemmules without +pangenesis would enable us to understand +both the excessive weakness or non-existence of +normal use-inheritance, and the excessive strength +and abruptness of the effect of their partial destruction +under special pathological conditions.</p> + +<p>The series of epileptic phenomena that can be +excited by tickling a certain part of the cheek +and neck of the adult guinea-pig during the growth +and rejoining of the ends of the severed nerve,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +are said to be repeated with striking accuracy of +detail in the young who inherit mutilated toes; +but as epilepsy is often due to some <i>one</i> exciting +cause or morbid condition, the single transmission +of a highly morbid condition of the system might +easily reproduce the whole chain of consequences +and might also have caused the loss of toes.</p> + +<p>The particulars of the guinea-pig cases are +very inadequately recorded,<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> but the results are so +anomalous<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> that Brown-Séquard's own conclusion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +is that the epilepsy and the inherited injuries are +<i>not</i> directly transmitted, but that "what is +transmitted is the morbid state of the nervous +system." He thinks that the missing toes may +"possibly" be exceptions to this conclusion, +"but the other facts only imply the transmission +of a morbid state of the sympathetic or sciatic +nerve or of a part of the medulla oblongata." +Until we can tell what is transmitted, we are not +in a position to determine whether there is any +true inheritance or only an exaggerated simulation +of it under peculiar circumstances. When the +actual observers believe that the mutilations and +epilepsy are not the cause of their own repetition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +and when these observers guard themselves by +such phrases as, "if any conclusion can at present +be drawn from those facts," we who have only +incomplete reports to guide us may well be +excused if we preserve an even more pronounced +attitude of caution and reserve.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> The morbid state +of the system may be wholly due to general injury +of the germs rather than to specific inheritance.</p> + +<p>Weismann suggests that the morbid condition +of the nervous system may be due to some +infection such as might arise from microbes, which +find a home in the mutilated and disordered +nervous system in the parent, and subsequently +transmit themselves to the offspring through the +reproductive elements, as the infections of various +diseases appear to do—the muscardine silkworm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +disease in particular being known to be conveyed +to offspring in this manner.</p> + +<p>But whether we can discover the true explanation +or not, inherited mutilations can hardly +be accounted for as the result of a general +tendency to inherit acquired modifications. +How could a factor which seems to be totally +inoperative in cases of ordinary mutilation, and +only infinitesimally operative in transmitting the +normal effects of use and disuse, suddenly become +so powerful as to completely overthrow atavism, +and its own tendency to transmit the non-mutilated +type of one of the parents and of +the non-mutilated type presented by the injured +parent in earlier life? Does not so striking and +abrupt an intensification of its usually insignificant +power demand an explanation widely different +from that which might account for the extremely +slow and slight inheritance of the normal effects +of use and disuse? Surely it would be better to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +suspend one's judgment as to the true explanation +of highly exceptional and purely pathological cases +rather than resort to an hypothesis that creates more +difficulties than it solves.</p> + +<h3>THE MOTMOT'S TAIL.</h3> + +<p>The narrowing of the long central tail +feathers of the motmot is attributed to the inherited +effects of habitual mutilation (<i>Descent of +Man</i>, pp. 384, 603). But in the specimens at South +Kensington<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> the narrowness extends upwards +much beyond the habitually denuded part, and the +broadened end is the broadest part of the whole +feather. If the inherited effect of an inch or +two of denudation extends from three to six inches +upwards, why has it not also extended two inches +downwards so as to narrow the broadened end?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +The narrowness seems to be a mainly relative or +negative effect produced by the broadening out +of a long tapering feather at its end under the +influence of sexual selection. Several other birds +have similarly narrowed or spoon-shaped feathers +and do not bite them. Is it not more feasible to +suppose that this attractive peculiarity first suggested +its artificial intensification, than to suppose +that the bird began nibbling without any definite +cause? Sexual selection would then encourage +the habit. Anyhow, it is as impossible to show +that the mutilation preceded the narrowing as it +is to show that tonsure preceded baldness.</p> + +<h3>OTHER INHERITED INJURIES MENTIONED BY +DARWIN.</h3> + +<p>Darwin quotes some cases from Dr. Prosper +Lucas's "long" but weak and unsatisfactory "list<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +of inherited injuries."<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> But Lucas was somewhat +credulous. One of his cases is that many girls +were born in London without mammæ through the +injurious effect of certain corsets on the mothers. +He also gives a long account of a Jew who could +read through the thick covers of a book, and whose +son inherited this "hyperæsthesia" of the sense +of sight in a still more remarkable degree (i. +113-119). Evidently Lucas's cases cannot be +accepted without some amount of reserve.</p> + +<p>The cases of the three calves which inherited +the one-horned condition of the cow, the two sons +who inherited a father's crooked finger, and the two +sons who were microphthalmic on the same side +as their father had lost an eye, may be due to +mere coincidence; or an inherited constitutional +tendency or liability might lead to somewhat similar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +results in parent and offspring<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>—just as the tendency +to certain fatal diseases or to suicide may +produce similar results in father and son, although +the artificially-produced hanging or apoplexy obviously +cannot be directly transmitted. That more +than one of the offspring was affected does not +render the chances against coincidence "almost infinitely +great," as Darwin mistakenly supposes. It +"frequently occurs" that a man's sons or daughters +may <i>all</i> exhibit either a latent or a newly-developed +congenital peculiarity previously unknown;<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> and +the coincidence may merely be that one of the +parents accidentally suffered a similar kind of injury—a +kind of coincidence which must of course +occasionally occur, and which may have been +partly caused by a latent tendency. The chances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> +against coincidence are indeed great, but the cases +appear to be correspondingly rare.</p> + +<p>Darwin acknowledges that many supposed +instances of inherited mutilation may be due +to coincidence; and there is apparently no more +reason for attributing inherited scars, &c., to +any special form of heredity than to the effect of +the mother's imagination on the unborn babe—a +popular but fallacious belief in corroboration of +which far more alleged instances could be collected +than of the inheritance of injuries.</p> + +<p>As an instance of the coincidences that occur, +I may mention that a friend of mine has a +daughter who was born with a small hole in one +ear, just as if it were already pierced for the earring +which she has since worn in it. I suppose, +however, that no one will venture to claim +this as an instance of the inheritance of a +mutilation practised by female ancestors, especially +as such holes are not altogether unknown or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +inexplicable, though very rarely occurring low +down in the lobe of the ear.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p> + +<p>Many cases are known of the inheritance of +mutilations or malformations arising congenitally +from some abrupt variation in the reproductive +elements. In such cases as the one-eared rabbits, +the two-legged pigs, the three-legged dogs, the +one-horned stags, hornless bulls, earless rabbits, +lop-eared rabbits, tailless dogs, &c., if the +father or the mother or the embryo had suffered +from some accident or disease which might plausibly +have been assigned as the cause of the +original malformation, these transmitted defects +would readily be cited as instances of the +inheritance of an accidentally-produced modification.</p> + +<p>The inheritance of exostoses on horses' legs may +be the inheritance of a constitutional tendency<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> +rather than of the effect of the parents' hard +travelling. Horses congenitally liable to such +formations would transmit the liability,<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> and +this might readily be mistaken for inheritance of +the results of the liability. An apparent increase +in this liability might arise from greater attention +being now paid to it, or from increased use of +harder roads; or a real increase might be due to +panmixia and some obscure forms of correlation.</p> + +<h3>QUASI-INHERITANCE.</h3> + +<p>Of course artificially-caused ill-health or weakness +in parents will tend in a general way to +injure the offspring. But deterioration thus +caused is only a form of quasi-inheritance, as I +should prefer to call it. Semi-starvation in a new-born +babe is <i>not</i> truly inherited from its half-starved +mother, but is the direct result of insufficient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +nourishment. The general welfare of germs—as of +parasites—is necessarily bound up with that of +the organism which feeds and shelters them, but +this is not heredity, and is quite irrelevant to the +question whether particular modifications are +transmitted or not.</p> + +<p>Another form of quasi-inheritance is seen in the +communication of certain infections to offspring. +Not being transmitted by the action of the organism +so much as in defiance of it, such diseases +are not truly hereditary, though for convenience' +sake they are usually so described.</p> + +<p>A perversion or prevention of true inheritance +is also seen in the action of alcohol, or excessive +overwork, or any other cause which by originating +morbid conditions in individuals may also injure +the reproductive elements.</p> + +<p>These forms of quasi-inheritance are, of course, +highly important so far as the improvement of +the race is concerned. So, too, is the fact that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +improved or deteriorated habits and thoughts are +transmitted by personal teaching and influence and +are cumulative in their effect. But all this must +not be confounded with the inheritance of acquired +characters. Cases of quasi-inheritance +may perhaps be most readily distinguished from +cases of true inheritance by the time test. When +a modification acquired in adult life is promptly +communicated to the child in early life or from +birth, it may rightly be suspected that the inheritance, +like that of money or title, is not truly +congenital, but is extraneous or even anti-congenital +in its nature. Judged by such a standard, +the inherited injuries in Brown-Séquard's +guinea-pigs are only exceptional cases of quasi-inheritance, +and are not necessarily indicative +of any general rule affecting true inheritance.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> A very able anatomist of my acquaintance denies the inheritance +of mutilations and injuries, although he strongly believes in the +inheritance of the effects of use and disuse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, i. 467-469. +Lost toes were only seen by Dr. Dupuy in three young out +of two hundred. Obersteiner found that most of the offspring of +his epileptic guinea-pigs were injuriously affected, being weakly, +small, paralysed in one or more limbs, and so forth. Only two +were epileptic, and both were weakly and died early (Weismann's +<i>Essays</i>, p. 311). A morbid condition of the spinal cord might affect +the hind limbs especially (as in paraplegia) and might occasionally +cause loss of toes in the embryo by preventing development or by +ulceration. Brown-Séquard does not say that the defective feet +were on the same side as in the parents (<i>Lancet</i>, Jan., 1875, pp. 7, 8).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. +57.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, ii. 392. Perhaps it might be better to suppose that the +<i>best</i> gemmules were sacrificed in repairing the injured <i>nerve</i>, and +hence only inferior substitutes were left to take their place, and +could only imperfectly reproduce the injured part of the nervous +system in offspring.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Hence perhaps Mr. Spencer's error in representing the +epileptic liability as permanent and as coming on <i>after</i> healing +(<i>Factors of Organic Evolution</i>, p. 27).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> It is not claimed that the imperfect foot was on the same side of +the body as in the parent, and where parents had lost <i>all</i> the toes +of a foot, or the whole foot, the few offspring affected usually had +lost only two toes out of the three, or only a part of one or two +or three toes. Sometimes the offspring had toes missing on <i>both</i> +hind feet, although the parent was only affected in <i>one</i>. <i>One</i> diseased +ear and eye in the parent was "generally" or "always" succeeded +by <i>two</i> equally affected ears and eyes in the offspring (cf. <i>Pop. +Science Monthly</i>, New York, xi. 334). The important law of +inheritance at corresponding periods was also set aside. Gangrene +or inflammation commenced in both ears and both eyes soon after +birth (pointing possibly to infection of some kind); the epileptic +period commenced "perhaps two months or more after birth," while +the loss of toes had occurred before birth. In no case, as Weismann +points out, is the original mutilation of the nervous system ever transmitted. +Even where an extirpated ganglion was never regenerated +in the parent, the offspring always regained the part in an apparently +perfect condition. On the whole the conflicting results ought to be +as puzzling to those who may attribute them to a universal tendency +to inherit the exact condition of parents as they are to those who, like +myself, are sceptical as to the existence of such a law or tendency.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> The various results need to be fully and impartially recorded, +and they should also be well tested and confirmed in proportion as +they appear improbable and contrary to general experience. Professor +Romanes has been carrying out the necessary experiments for +some time past.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Natural History Museum, central hall, third recess on the +left.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Traité de l'Hérédité</i>, ii. 489; <i>Variation of Animals and Plants +under Domestication</i>, i. 469. If injuries are inherited, why has the +repeated rupture of the hymen produced no inherited effect?</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Compare the three cases of crooked fingers given in <i>Variation +of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. 55, 240.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, i. 460. Thus, where two brothers married two sisters all +the seven children were perfect albinos, although none of the +parents or their relatives were albinos. In another case the nine +children of two sound parents were all born blind (ii. 322).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> See pp. 179-182, <i>Evolution and Disease</i>, by J. Bland Sutton, to +whom and to our mutual friend Dr. D. Thurston I am indebted for +information on various points.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. 290; +i. 454.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p> +<h2>MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS.</h2> + +<h3>TRUE RELATION OF PARENTS AND OFFSPRING.</h3> + +<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">It</span> is difficult to entirely free ourselves from +the flattering and almost universal idea that parents +are true originators or creators of copies of +themselves. But the main truth, if not the whole +truth, is that they are merely the transmitters +of types of which they and their offspring are +alike more or less similarly moulded resultants. +A parent is a trustee. He transmits, not himself +and his own modifications, but the stock, the +type, the representative elements, of which he is +a product and a custodian in one. It seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +probable that he has no more definite or +"particulate" influence over the reproductive +elements within him than a mother over the +embryo or a vessel over its cargo. Parent and +offspring are like successive copies of books +printed from the same "type." A battered +letter in the "type" will display its effects in +both earlier and later copies alike, but a purely +extraneous or acquired flaw in the first copy is +not necessarily repeated in subsequent copies. Unlike +printer's type, however, the material source +of heredity is of a fluctuating nature, consisting +of competing elements derived from two parents +and from innumerable ancestors.</p> + +<p>Galton compares parent and child to successive +pendants on the same chain. Weismann +likens them to successive offshoots thrown up by +a long underground root or sucker. Such comparisons +indicate the improbability of acquired +modifications being transmitted to offspring.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p> + +<p>That parts are developed in offspring independently +of those parts in parents is clear. +Mutilated parents transmit parts which they do +not possess. The offspring of young parents cannot +inherit the later stages of life from parents who +have not passed through them. Cases of remote +reversion or atavism show that ancestral peculiarities +can transmit themselves in a latent or +undeveloped condition for hundreds or thousands +of generations. Many obvious facts compelled +Darwin to suppose that vast numbers of the reproductive +gemmules in an individual are not thrown +off by his own cells, but are the self-multiplying +progeny of ancestral gemmules. Galton restricts +the production of gemmules by the personal +structure to a few exceptional cases, and would +evidently like to dispense with pangenesis altogether, +if he could only be sure that acquired +characters are never inherited. Weismann entirely +rejects pangenesis and the inheritance of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +acquired characters. This enables him to explain +heredity by his theory of the "Continuity +of the Germ-plasm."<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> Parent and offspring are +alike successive products or offshoots of this +persistent germ-substance, which obviously would +not be correspondingly affected by modifications of +parts in parents, and so would render the transmission +of acquired characters impossible.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p> +<h3>INVERSE INHERITANCE.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Galton contends that the reproductive elements +become sterile when used in forming and +maintaining the individual, and that only a small +proportion of them are so used.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> He holds that +the next generation will be formed entirely, or +almost entirely, from the residue of undeveloped +germs, which, not having been employed in the +structure and work of the individual, have been +free to multiply and form the reproductive elements +whence future individuals are derived. Hence the +singular inferiority not infrequently displayed by +the children of men of extraordinary genius, +especially where the ancestry has been only of a +mediocre ability. The valuable germs have been +used up in the individual, and rendered sterile in +the structure of his person. Hence, too, the "strong +tendency to deterioration in the transmission of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> +every exceptionally gifted race." Mr. Galton's +hypothesis "explains the fact of certain diseases +skipping one or more generations," and it "agrees +singularly well with many classes of fact;" and it +is strongly opposed to the theory of use-inheritance. +The elements which are used die almost universally +without germ progeny: the germs which are <i>not</i> +used are the great source of posterity. Hence, +when the germs or gemmules which achieve development +are either better or worse than the +residue, the qualities transmitted to offspring will +be of an inverse character. If brain-work attracts, +develops <i>and sterilizes</i> the best gemmules, the +ultimate effect of education on the intellect of +posterity may differ from its immediate effect.</p> + +<h3>EARLY ORIGIN OF THE OVA.</h3> + +<p>As the ova are formed at as early a period +as the rest of the maternal structure, Galton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +notices that it seems improbable that they +would be correspondingly affected by subsequent +modifications of parental structure. Of +course it is not certain that this is a valid +argument. We know that the paternal half of +the reproductive elements does not enter the +ovum till a comparatively late stage in its history, +and it is quite possible that maternal elements or +gemmules may also enter the ovum from without. +If reproductive elements were confined to one +special part or organ, we should be unable to explain +the reproduction of lost limbs in salamanders, +and the persistent effect of intercrossing on subsequent +issue by the same mother, and the propagation +of plants from shoots, or of the begonia from +minute fragments of leaves, or the development of +small pieces of water-worms into complete animals.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p> +<h3>MARKED EFFECTS OF USE AND DISUSE ON THE +INDIVIDUAL.</h3> + +<p>These are, to some extent, an argument against +the cumulative inheritance of such effects. When +a nerve atrophies from disuse, or a duct shrivels, +or bone is absorbed, or a muscle becomes small or +flabby, it proves, so far, that the average effect of +use through enormous ages is <i>not</i> transmitted. +When the fibula of a dog's leg thickens by 400 per +cent. to a size "equal to or greater than" that of +the removed tibia which previously did the work,<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> +it shows that in spite of disuse for countless generations, +the "almost filiform" bone has retained a +potentiality of development which is fully equal to +that possessed by the larger one which has been +constantly used. When, after being reared on the +ailanthus, the caterpillars of the <i>Bombyx hesperus</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +die of hunger rather than return to their natural +food, the inherited effect of ancestral habit does +not seem to be particularly strong. Neither is +there any strongly-inherited effect of long-continued +ancestral wildness in many animals which +are easily tamed.</p> + +<h3>WOULD NATURAL SELECTION FAVOUR USE-INHERITANCE?</h3> + +<p>If use-inheritance is really one of the factors of +evolution, it is certainly a subordinate one, and an +utterly helpless one, whenever it comes into conflict +with the great ruling principle of Selection. +Would this dominant cause of evolution have +favoured a tendency to use-inheritance if such +had appeared, or would it have discouraged +and destroyed it? We have already seen that +use-inheritance is unnecessary, since natural selection +will be far more effective in bringing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +about advantageous modifications; and if it can +be shown that use-inheritance would often be +an evil, it then becomes probable that on the +whole natural selection would more strongly discourage +and eliminate it as a hostile factor than +it might occasionally favour such a tendency as a +totally unnecessary aid.</p> + +<h3>USE-INHERITANCE AN EVIL.</h3> + +<p>Use-inheritance would crudely and indiscriminately +proportion parts to actual work done—or +rather to the varying <i>nourishment and growth</i> +resulting from a multiplicity of causes—and this +in its various details would often conflict most +seriously with the real necessities of the case, +such as occasional passive strength, or appropriate +shape, lightness and general adaptation. If its +accumulated effects were not corrected by natural +or sexual selection, horns and antlers would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> +disappear in favour of enlarged hoofs. The +elephant's tusks would become smaller than its +teeth. Men would have callosities for sitting +on, like certain monkeys, and huge corns or +hoofs for walking on. Bones would often be +modified disastrously. Thus the condyle of the +human jaw would become larger than the body +of the jaw, because as the fulcrum of the lever +it receives more pressure. Some organs (like the +heart, which is always at work) would become +inconveniently or unnecessarily large. Other +absolutely indispensable organs, which are comparatively +passive or are very seldom used, +would dwindle until their weakness caused the +ruin of the individual or the extinction of the +species. In eliminating various evil results of use-inheritance, +natural selection would be eliminating +use-inheritance itself. The displacement of +Lamarck's theory by Darwin's shows that the +effects of use-inheritance often differ from those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> +required by natural selection; and it is clear that +the latter factor must at least have reduced use-inheritance +to the very minor position of comparative +feebleness and harmlessness assigned to it +by Darwin.</p> + +<p>Use-inheritance would be ruinous through +causing unequal variation in co-operative parts—of +which Mr. Spencer may accept his own instances +of the jaws and teeth, and the cave-crab's +lost eyes and persistent eye-stalks, as typical +examples. That the variation would be unequal +seems almost self-evident from the varying rapidity +and extent of the effects of use and disuse on +different tissues and on different parts of the +general structure. The optic nerve may atrophy in +a few months from disuse consequent on the loss +of the eye. Some of the bones of the rudimentary +hind legs of the whale are still in existence after +disuse for an enormous period. Evidently use-inheritance +could not equally modify the turtle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +and its shell, or the brain and its skull; and in +minor matters there would be the same incongruity +of effect. Thus, if the molar teeth lengthened +from extra use the incisors could not meet. Unequal +and indiscriminate variation would throw +the machinery of the organism out of gear in +innumerable ways.</p> + +<p>Use-inheritance would perpetuate various evils. +We are taught, for instance, that it perpetuates +short-sight, inferior senses, epilepsy, insanity, +nervous disorders, and so forth. It would apparently +transmit the evil effects of over-exertion, +disuse, hardship, exposure, disease and accident, +as well as the defects of age or immaturity.</p> + +<p>Would it not be better on the whole if each +individual took a fresh start as far as possible +on the advantageous typical lines laid down by +natural selection? Through the long stages of +evolution from primæval protoplasm upwards, +such species as were least affected by use-inheritance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +would be most free to develop necessary but +seldom-used organs, protective coverings such as +shells or skulls, and natural weapons, defences, +ornaments, special adaptations, and so forth; and +this would be an advantage—for survival would +obviously depend on the <i>importance</i> of a structure +or faculty in deciding the struggle for existence +and reproduction, and not on the total amount +of its using or nourishment. If natural selection +had on the whole favoured this officious ally and +frequent enemy, surely we should find better evidence +of its existence.</p> + +<p>Without laying undue stress upon the evil +effects of use-inheritance, a careful examination +of them in detail may at least serve to counter-balance +the optimistic <i>a priori</i> arguments for +belief in that plausible but unproven factor of +evolution.</p> + +<p>The benefits derivable from use-inheritance are +largely illusory. The effects of <i>use</i>, indeed, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> +generally beneficial up to a certain point; for +natural selection has sanctioned or evolved organs +which possess the property or potentiality of developing +to the right extent under the stimulus +of use or nourishment. But use-<i>inheritance</i> would +cumulatively alter this individual adaptability, +and would tend to fix the size of organs by the +average amount of ancestral use or disuse rather +than by the actual requirements of the individual. +Of course under changed conditions involving +increased or lessened use of parts it might +become advantageous; but even here it may +prove a decided hindrance to adaptive evolution in +some respects as well as an unnecessary aid in +others. Thus in the case of animals becoming +heavier, or walking more, it would <i>lengthen</i> the +legs although natural selection might require them +to be shortened. In the Aylesbury duck and the +Call duck, if use-inheritance has increased the +dimensions of the bones and tendons of the leg,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> +natural selection has had to counteract this increase +so far as length is concerned, and to effect 8 per +cent. of shortening besides. If use-inheritance +thickens bones without proportionally lengthening +them, it would hinder rather than help the evolution +of such structures as the long light wings of birds, +or the long legs and neck of the giraffe or crane.</p> + +<h3>VARIED EFFECTS OF USE AND DISUSE.</h3> + +<p>The changes which we somewhat roughly +and empirically group together as the effects of +"use and disuse" are of widely diverse character. +Thus bone, as the physiological fact, thickens under +<i>alternations</i> of pressure (and the consequent +increased flow of nourishment), but atrophies +under a steadily continued pressure; so that if +the use of a bone involved continuous pressure, +the effect of such use would be a partial or total +absorption of that bone. Darwin shows that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +bone lengthens as well as thickens from carrying +a greater weight, while tension (as seen in +sailors' arms, which are used in pulling) appears to +have an equally marked effect in shortening bones +(<i>Descent of Man</i>, p. 32). Thus different kinds of +use may produce opposite results. The cumulative +inheritance of such effects would often be +mischievous. The limbs of the sloth and the +prehensile tail of the spider monkey would +continually grow shorter, while the legs of the +evolving elephant or rhinoceros might lengthen +to an undesirable extent. Such cumulative +tendencies of use-inheritance, if they exist, are +obviously well kept under by natural selection.</p> + +<p>Although the ultimate effect of use is generally +growth or enlargement through increased flow of +blood, the first effect usually is a loss of substance, +and a consequent diminution of size and strength. +When the loss exceeds the growth, use will +diminish or deteriorate the part used, while disuse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> +would enlarge or perfect it. Teeth, claws, nails, +skin, hair, hoofs, feathers, &c., may thus be worn +away faster than they can renew themselves. +But this wearing away usually stimulates the +repairing process, and so increases the rate of +growth; that is, it will increase the size produced, +if not the size retained. Which effect of use does +use-inheritance transmit in such cases—the increased +rate of growth, or the dilapidation of the +worn-out parts? We can hardly suppose that +both these effects of use will be inherited. Would +shaving destroy the beard in time or strengthen +it? Will the continued shearing of sheep +increase or lessen the growth of wool? What +will be the ultimate effect of plucking geese's +quills, and of the eider duck's abstraction of the +down from her breast? If the mutilated parts +grow stronger or more abundantly, why were +the motmot's feathers alleged to be narrowed by +the inherited effects of ancestral nibbling?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p> + +<p>The "use" or "work" or "function" of muscles, +nerves, bones, teeth, skin, tendon, glands, ducts, +eyes, blood corpuscles, cilia, and the other constituents +of the organism, is as widely different as +the various parts are from each other, and the +effects of their use or disuse are equally varied +and complicated.</p> + +<h3>USE-INHERITANCE IMPLIES PANGENESIS.</h3> + +<p>How could the transmission of these varied +effects to offspring be accounted for? Is it possible +to believe, with Mr. Spencer, that the effects +of use and disuse on the parts of the personal +structure are simultaneously registered in corresponding +impressions on the seminal germs? +Must we not feel, with Darwin apparently,<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> that +the <i>only</i> intelligible explanation of use-inheritance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> +is the hypothesis of Pangenesis, according to +which each modified cell, or physiological unit, +throws off similarly-modified gemmules or parts +of itself, which ultimately reproduce the change +in offspring? If we reject pangenesis, it becomes +difficult to see how use-inheritance can be +possible.</p> + +<h3>PANGENESIS IMPROBABLE.</h3> + +<p>The more important and best-known phenomena +of heredity do not require any such +hypothesis, and leading facts (such as atavism, +transmission of lost parts, and the general non-transmission +of acquired characters) are so adverse +to it that Darwin has to concede that many of the +reproductive gemmules are atavistic, and that by +continuous self-multiplication they may preserve +a practical "continuity of germ-substance," as +Weismann would term it. The idea that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +relationship of offspring to parent is one of direct +descent is, as Galton tells us, "wholly untenable"; +and the only reason he admits some supplementary +traces of pangenesis into his "Theory of +Heredity,"<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> is that he may thus account for the +more or less questionable cases of the transmission +of acquired characters. But there appears +to be no necessity even for this concession. We +ought therefore to dispense with the useless and +gratuitous hypothesis that cells multiply by +throwing off minute self-multiplying gemmules, as +well as by the well-known method of self-division. +If pangenesis occurs, the transmission of acquired +characters ought to be a prominent fact. +The size, strength, health and other good or evil +qualities of the cells could hardly fail to exercise +a marked and corresponding effect upon the size +and quality of the reproductive gemmules thrown +off by those cells. The direct evidence tends to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> +show that these free gemmules do not exist. Transfusion +of blood has failed to affect inheritance in +the slightest degree. Pangenesis, with its attraction +of gemmules from all parts of the body into the +germ-cells, and the free circulation of gemmules +in the offspring till they hit upon or are attracted +by the particular cell or cells, with which alone +they can readily unite, seems a less feasible theory +and less in conformity with the whole of the facts +than an hypothesis of germ-continuity which supposes +that the development of the germ-plasm +and of the successive self-dividing cells of the +body proceeds from within. Darwin's keen +analogy of the fertilization of plants by pollen +renders development from without conceivable, +but as there are no insects to convey gemmules to +their destination, each kind of gemmule would +have to be exceedingly numerous and easily attracted +from amongst an inconceivable number of +other gemmules. Arguments against pangenesis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +can also be drawn from the case of neuter insects—a +fact which seems to have escaped Darwin's +notice, although he had seen how strongly that +case was opposed to the doctrine which is the +essential basis of the theory of pangenesis.</p> + +<h3>SPENCER'S EXPLANATION OF USE-INHERITANCE.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Spencer's explanation of the inheritance of +the effects of use and disuse (p. 36) is that "while +generating a modified <i>consensus</i> of functions and of +structures, the activities are at the same time impressing +this modified <i>consensus</i> on the sperm-cells +and germ-cells whence future individuals are to be +produced"—a proposition which reads more like +metaphysics than science. Difficult to understand +or believe in ordinary instances, such <i>consensus</i>-inheritance +seems impossible in cases like that of +the hive-bee. Can we suppose that the <i>consensus</i> +of the activities of the working bee impresses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> +itself on the sperm-cells of the drones and on the +germ-cells of the carefully secluded queen? +Büchner thinks so, for he says: "Although the +queens and drones do not now work, yet the +capacities inherited from earlier times still remain to +them, especially to the former, and are kept alive +and fresh by the impressions constantly made upon +them during life, and they are thus in a position to +transmit them to posterity." Surely it is better +to abandon a cherished theory than to be compelled +to defend it by explanations which are as +inconsistent as they are inadequate. New capacities +are developed as well as old ones kept fresh. +The massacre or expulsion of the drones would +have to impress itself on the germ-cells of an onlooking +queen, and the imprisonment of the +queen on the sperm-cells of the drones—and in +such a way, moreover, as to be afterwards developed +into action in the neuters only. And +use-inheritance all the while is being thoroughly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> +overpowered by impression-inheritance—by the +full transmission of that which is merely seen in +others! If such a law prevails, one may feel +cold because an ancestor thought of the frosty +Caucasus. None of this absurdity would arise if +it were clearly seen that a parent is only a trustee—that +transmission and development are perfectly +distinct—that parental modifications are irrelevant +to those transmitted to offspring.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> <i>Essays on Heredity</i>, p. 104. Weismann's theory is clear, simple +and convenient, but incomplete; for, unlike Darwin's theory of +pangenesis, it scarcely attempts any real explanation of the extremely +complex potentialities possessed by the reproductive elements. +Perhaps we might retain Darwin's self-multiplying gemmules without +supposing them to be thrown off by the cells, which will no longer +be credited with <i>two</i> modes of multiplication. These minute germs +or gemmules may have been evolved by natural selection playing +upon the sample germs that achieve development; and they may +exist either separately, or (preferably but perhaps not invariably) in +aggregates to form Weismann's germ-plasm.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <i>Contemporary Review</i>, Dec., 1875, p. 88.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. +286.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> <i>Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, ii. 388, +398, 367; <i>Life and Letters</i>, iii. 44.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> <i>Contemporary Review</i>, Dec., 1875, pp. 94, 95.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONCLUSIONS.</h2> + +<h3>USE-INHERITANCE DISCREDITED AS UNNECESSARY, +UNPROVEN, AND IMPROBABLE.</h3> + +<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">General</span> experience teaches that acquired +characters are not usually inherited; and investigation +shows that the apparent exceptions to +this great rule are probably fallacious. Even the +alleged instances of use-inheritance culled by such +great and judicious selectors as Darwin and +Spencer break down upon examination; for they +can be better explained without use-inheritance +than with it. On the other hand, the adverse +facts and considerations are almost strong enough +to prove the actual non-existence of such a law or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> +tendency. There is no need to undertake the +apparently impossible task of demonstrating an +absolute negative. It will be enough to ask that +the Lamarckian factor of use-inheritance shall be +removed from the category of accredited factors of +evolution to that of unnecessary and improbable +hypotheses. The main explanation or source of +the fallacy may be found in the fact that natural +selection frequently imitates some of the more +obvious effects of use and disuse.</p> + +<h3>MODERN RELIANCE ON USE-INHERITANCE +MISPLACED.</h3> + +<p>Modern philanthropy—so far at least as it ever +studies ultimate results—constantly relies on this +ill-founded belief as its justification for ignoring +the warnings of those who point out the ultimately +disastrous results of a systematic defiance +or reversal of the great law of natural selection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +This reliance finds strong support in Mr. Spencer's +latest teachings, for he holds that the inheritance +of the effects of use and disuse takes place +universally, and that it is now "the chief factor" +in the evolution of civilized man (pp. 35, 74, iv)—natural +selection being quite inadequate for the +work of progressive modification. Practically he +abandons the hope of evolution by natural selection, +and substitutes the ideal of a nation being +"modified <i>en masse</i> by transmission of the effects" +of its institutions and habits. Use-inheritance +will "mould its members far more rapidly and +comprehensively" than can be effected by the +survival of the fittest alone.</p> + +<p>But could we rely upon the aid of use-inheritance +if it really were a universal law and not +a mere simulation of one? Let us consider some +of the features of this alleged factor of evolution, +seeing that it is henceforth to be our principal +means of securing the improvement of our species<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +and our continued adaptation to the changing +conditions of a progressive civilization.</p> + +<p>It is curiously uncertain and irregular in its +action. It diminishes or abolishes some structures +(such as jaws or eyes) without correspondingly +diminishing or abolishing other equally disused +and closely related parts (such as teeth, or eye-stalks). +It thickens ducks' leg-bones while allowing +them to shorten. It shortens the disused +wing-bones of ducks and the leg-bones of rabbits +while allowing them to thicken; and yet in other +cases it greatly reduces the thickness of bones +without shortening them. It transmits tameness +most powerfully in an animal which usually +cannot acquire it. It aids in webbing the feet of +water-dogs, but fails to web the feet of the water-hen +or to remove the web in the feet of upland +geese.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> It allows the disused fibula to retain a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +potentiality of development fully equal to that +possessed by the long-used tibia. It lengthens +legs because they are used in supporting the +body, and shortens arms because they are used +in pulling. Whether it enlarges brain if used +in one way and diminishes it if used in another, +we cannot tell; but it must obviously deaden +nervous sensibilities in some cases and intensify +them in others. It enlarges hands long +before they are used, and thickens soles long +before the time for walking on them. At the +same time, as if by an oversight, it so delays its +transmission of the habit of walking on these +thickened soles, that the gradual and tedious acquisition +of the non-transmitted habit costs the +infant much time and trouble and often some pain +and danger. Yet where aided by natural selection, +as with chickens and foals, it transmits the habit +in wonderful perfection and at a remarkably +early date. It transmits new paces in horses in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> +a single generation, but fails to perpetuate the +songs of birds. It modifies offspring like parents, +and yet allows the formation of two reproductive +types in plants, and of two or more types widely +different from the parents in some of the higher +insects. It is said to be indispensable for the co-ordinated +development of man and the giraffe +and the elk, but appears to be unnecessary for the +evolution and the maintenance of wonderful +structures and habits and instincts in a thousand +species of ants and bees and termites. It is the +only possible means of complex evolution and +adaptation of co-operative parts, and yet in +Mr. Spencer's most representative case it renders +such important parts as teeth and jaws unsuited +for each other, and is said to ruin the teeth by the +consequent overcrowding and decay. It survives +amidst a general "lack of recognised evidence," +and only seems to act usefully and healthily and +regularly in quarters where it can least easily be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> +distinguished from other more powerful and demonstrable +factors of evolution. So little does it +care to display its powers where they would be +easily verifiable as well as useful that practical +breeders ignore it. So slight is its independent +power that it seems to allow natural selection or +sexual selection or artificial selection to modify +organisms in sheer defiance of its utmost opposition, +just as readily as they modify organisms in +other directions with its utmost help. If it +partially perpetuates and extends the pecked-out +indentations in the motmot's tail feathers, it on the +other hand fails to transmit the slightest trace of +mutilation in an almost infinite number of +ordinary cases, and even where the mutilation is +repeated for a hundred generations; and it +apparently repairs rather than transmits the +ordinary and oft-repeated losses caused by +plucking hair, down and feathers, and the wear +and tear of claws, teeth, hoofs and skin.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p> +<p>It is often mischievous as well as anomalous in +its action. Under civilization with its division of +labour, the various functions of mind and body are +very unequally exercised. There is overwork or +misuse of one part and disuse and neglect of others, +leading to the partial breakdown or degeneration +of various organs and to general deterioration of +health through disturbed balance of the constitution. +The brain, or rather particular parts of it, are +often over-stimulated, while the body is neglected. +In many ways education and civilization foster +nervousness and weakness, and undermine the rude +natural health and spirits of the human animal. +Alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, extra brain work, late +hours, dissipation, overwork, indoor life, division of +labour, preservation of the weak, and many other +causes, all help to injure the modern constitution; +so that the prospect of cumulative intensification of +these evils by the additional influence of use-inheritance +is not an encouraging one. It is true<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> +that modern progress and prosperity are improving +the people in various respects by their direct action; +but if use-inheritance has any share in effecting this +improvement it must also transmit increased wants +and more luxurious habits, together with such evils +as have already been referred to. As depicted by +its defenders, use-inheritance transmits evils far +more powerfully and promptly than benefits. It +transmits insanity and shattered nerves rather than +the healthy brain which preceded the breakdown. +It perpetuates, and cumulatively intensifies, a +deterioration in the senses of civilized men, but it +fails to perpetuate the rank vigour of various plants +when too well nourished, or the flourishing condition +of various animals when too fat or when tamed. It +already transmits the short-sight caused by so +modern an art as watchmaking, but so fails to +transmit the long-practised art of seeing (as it does +of walking and talking) that vision is worse than +useless to a man until he gradually acquires the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> +necessary but non-transmitted associations of +sensation and idea by his own experience. In a +well-known case, a blind man on gaining his sight +by an operation said that "all objects seemed +to touch his eyes, as what he felt did his skin"—so +little had the universal experience of countless ages +impressed itself on his faculties. Under normal +healthy conditions use-inheritance is so slow in +its action that "several generations" must elapse +before it produces any appreciable effect, and then +that effect is only precisely what selection might be +expected to bring about without its aid. Strong +for evil and slow for good, it can convey epilepsy +promptly in guinea pigs, but transmits the acquirements +of genius so poorly that our best student +of the heredity of genius has to account for the +frequent and remarkable deterioration of the +offspring by a theory which is strongly hostile to +use-inheritance. It would tend to make organisms +unworkable by the excessive differences in its rate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> +and manner of action on co-operative parts, and +by adapting these parts to the total amount of +nourishment received rather than to occasional +necessity or actual usefulness. It would tend to +stereotype habits and convert reason into instinct.</p> + +<p>How then can we rely upon use-inheritance for +the improvement of the race? Even if it is not a +sheer delusion, it may be more detrimental as a positive +evil than it is advantageous as an unnecessary +benefit; and as a normal modifying agent it is +miserably weak and untrustworthy in comparison +with the powerful selective influences by which +nature and society continually and inevitably affect +the species for good or for evil. The effects of use +and disuse—rightly directed by education in its +widest sense—must of course be called in to secure +the highly essential but nevertheless <i>superficial, +limited, and partly deceptive</i> improvement of individuals +and of social manners and methods; but as +this artificial development of already existing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> +potentialities does not directly or readily tend to +become congenital, it is evident that some considerable +amount of natural or artificial selection of the +more favourably varying individuals will still be the +only means of securing the race against the constant +tendency to degeneration which would ultimately +swallow up all the advantages of civilization. The +selective influences by which our present high level +has been reached and maintained may well be modified, +but they must not be abandoned or reversed +in the rash expectation that State education, or +State feeding of children, or State housing of the +poor, or any amount of State socialism or public +or private philanthropy, will prove permanently +satisfactory substitutes. If ruinous deterioration +and other more immediate evils, are to be avoided, +the race must still be to the swift and the battle to +the strong. The healthy Individualism so earnestly +championed by Mr. Spencer must be allowed free +play. Open competition, as Darwin teaches, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> +its survival and multiplication of the fittest, must +be allowed to decide the battle of life independently +of a foolish benevolence that prefers the elaborate +cultivation and multiplication of weeds to the +growth of corn and roses. We are trustees for the +countless generations of the future. If we are wise +we shall trust to the great ruling truths that we +assuredly know, rather than to the seductive claims +of an alleged factor of evolution for which no +satisfactory evidence can be produced.</p> + +<div class="p4">THE END.</div> + +<div class="p4"><small>RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY.</small></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Professor Romanes had casts made of the feet of upland geese, +and could not detect any diminution as compared with the web of +other geese in relation to the toes.</p></div></div> + +<hr /> + +<div class="center"><span class="fxl">NATURE SERIES.</span></div> + +<div class="bk1"><p>POPULAR LECTURES AND ADDRESSES ON +VARIOUS SUBJECTS IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE. By Sir <span class="smcap">William +Thomson</span>, D.C.L. LL.D., F.R.S.E, Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, +and Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. With +Illustrations. 3 vols. Crown 8vo. Vol. 1. <span class="smcap">Constitution of Matter</span>. +6<i>s.</i></p> + +<p>ON THE ORIGIN AND METAMORPHOSES OF +INSECTS. By Sir <span class="smcap">John Lubbock</span>, Bart., F.R.S., M.P., D.C.L., LL.D. +With numerous Illustrations. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>ON BRITISH WILD FLOWERS CONSIDERED IN +RELATION TO INSECTS. By Sir <span class="smcap">John Lubbock</span>, Bart., F.R.S., +M.P., D.C.L., LL.D. With Illustrations. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 4<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>FLOWERS, FRUITS AND LEAVES. By Sir <span class="smcap">John +Lubbock</span>, F.R.S., &c. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 4<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>THE TRANSIT OF VENUS. By <span class="smcap">G. Forbes</span>, M.A., Professor +of Natural Philosophy in the Andersonian University, Glasgow. Illustrated. +Crown 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>THE COMMON FROG. By <span class="smcap">St. George Mivart</span>, F.R.S., +Lecturer in Comparative Anatomy at St. Mary's Hospital. With numerous +Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>POLARISATION OF LIGHT. By <span class="smcap">W. Spottiswoode</span>, +F.R.S. With Illustrations. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>THE SCIENCE OF WEIGHING AND MEASURING, +AND THE STANDARDS OF MEASURE AND WEIGHT. By H. W. +<span class="smcap">Chisholm</span>, Warden of the Standards. With numerous Illustrations. Crown +8vo. 4<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>HOW TO DRAW A STRAIGHT LINE: a Lecture on +Linkages. By A. B. <span class="smcap">Kempe</span>. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p>LIGHT: A Series of Simple, Entertaining, and Inexpensive +Experiments in the Phenomena of Light, for the Use of Students of every age. +By A. 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