rough the way in which their leader had halted between two
opinions.

This is why Charles-Darwinians, from Professor Huxley downwards, have
kept the difference between Lamarck's opinions and those of Mr. Darwin so
much in the background. Unwillingness to make this understood is nowhere
manifested more clearly than in Dr. Francis Darwin's life of his father.
In this work Lamarck is sneered at once or twice, and told to go away,
but there is no attempt to state the two cases side by side; from which,
as from not a little else, I conclude that Dr. Francis Darwin has
descended from his father with singularly little modification.

Proceeding to the evidence for the transmissions of acquired habits, I
will quote two recently adduced examples from among the many that have
been credibly attested. The first was contributed to _Nature_ (March 14,
1889) by Professor Marcus M. Hartog, who wrote:--

"A. B. is moderately myopic and very astigmatic in the left eye;
extremely myopic in the right. As the left eye gave such bad images for
near objects, he was compelled in childhood to mask it, and acquired the
habit of leaning his head on his left arm for writing, so as to blind
that eye, or of resting the left temple and eye on the hand, with the
elbow on the table. At the age of fifteen the eyes were equalised by the
use of suitable spectacles, and he soon lost the habit completely and
permanently. He is now the father of two children, a boy and a girl,
whose vision (tested repeatedly and fully) is emmetropic in both eyes, so
that they have not inherited the congenital optical defect of their
father. All the same, they have both of them inherited his early
acquired habit, and need constant watchfulness to prevent their hiding
the left eye when writing, by resting the head on the left forearm or
hand. Imitation is here quite out of the question.

"Considering that every habit involves changes in the proportional
development of the muscular and osseous systems, and hence probably of
the nervous system also, the importance of inherited habits, natural or
acquired, cannot be overlooked in the general theory of inheritance. I
am fully aware that I shall be accused of flat Lamarckism, but a nickname
is not an argument."

To this Professor Ray Lankester rejoined (_Nature_, March 21, 1889):--

"It is not unusual for children to rest the head on the left forearm or
hand when writing, and I doubt whether much value can be attached t