this doctrine is to arouse instinctive
loathing; it is my fortunate task to maintain that such a nightmare
of waste and death is as baseless as it is repulsive.

The split in biological opinion occasioned by the deadlock to which
Charles-Darwinism has been reduced, though comparatively recent,
widens rapidly. Ten years ago Lamarck's name was mentioned only as
a byword for extravagance; now, we cannot take up a number of Nature
without seeing how hot the contention is between his followers and
those of Weismann. This must be referred, as I implied earlier, to
growing perception that Mr. Darwin should either have gone farther
towards Lamarckism or not so far. In admitting use and disuse as
freely as he did, he gave Lamarckians leverage for the overthrow of
a system based ostensibly on the accumulation of fortunate
accidents. In assigning the lion's share of development to the
accumulation of fortunate accidents, he tempted fortuitists to try
to cut the ground from under Lamarck's feet by denying that the
effects of use and disuse can be inherited at all. When the public
had once got to understand what Lamarck had intended, and wherein
Mr. Charles Darwin had differed from him, it became impossible for
Charles-Darwinians to remain where they were, nor is it easy to see
what course was open to them except to cast about for a theory by
which they could get rid of use and disuse altogether. Weismannism,
therefore, is the inevitable outcome of the straits to which
Charles-Darwinians were reduced through 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