fect, or of a
deficient blood-supply; it is in any case the inheritance of
functionally-modified structures.

Verification of the reasons above given for the paucity of this direct
evidence, is yielded by contemplation of it; for it is observable that
the cases named are cases which, from one or other cause, have thrust
themselves on observation. They justify the suspicion that it is not
because such cases are rare that many of them cannot be cited; but
simply because they are mostly unobtrusive, and to be found only by that
deliberate search which nobody makes. I say nobody, but I am wrong.
Successful search has been made by one whose competence as an observer
is beyond question, and whose testimony is less liable than that of all
others to any bias towards the conclusion that such inheritance takes
place. I refer to the author of the _Origin of Species_.

* * * * *

Now-a-days most naturalists are more Darwinian than Mr. Darwin himself.
I do not mean that their beliefs in organic evolution are more decided;
though I shall be supposed to mean this by the mass of readers, who
identify Mr. Darwin's great contribution to the theory of organic
evolution, with the theory of organic evolution itself, and even with
the theory of evolution at large. But I mean that the particular factor
which he first recognized as having played so immense a part in organic
evolution, has come to be regarded by his followers as the sole factor,
though it was not so regarded by him. It is true that he apparently
rejected altogether the causal agencies alleged by earlier inquirers. In
the Historical Sketch prefixed to the later editions of his _Origin of
Species_ (p. xiv, note), he writes:--"It is curious how largely my
grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous
grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. i, pp. 500-510),
published in 1794." And since, among the views thus referred to, was the
view that changes of structure in organisms arise by the inheritance of
functionally-produced changes, Mr. Darwin seems, by the above sentence,
to have implied his disbelief in such inheritance. But he did not mean
to imply this; for his belief in it as a cause of evolution, if not an
important cause, is proved by many passages in his works. In the first
chapter of the _Origin of Species_ (p. 8 of the sixth edition), he says
respecting the inherited effects of habit, that "with animals th