The Project Gutenberg EBook of Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?, by
William Platt Ball

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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: ASCII

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_NATURE SERIES_

ARE THE EFFECTS OF USE AND
DISUSE INHERITED?

_AN EXAMINATION OF THE VIEW HELD BY
SPENCER AND DARWIN_

BY
WILLIAM PLATT BALL

LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1890

_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.

PREFACE.

My 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 _Essays on Heredity_), 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 _not_
inherited is 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