d 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.

[60] 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.

[61] Natural History Museum, central hall, third recess on the left.

[62] _Traite de l'Heredite_, ii. 489; _Variation of Animals and Plants
under Domestication_, i. 469. If injuries are inherited, why has the
repeated rupture of the hymen produced no inherited effect?

[63] Compare the three cases of crooked fingers given in _Variation of
Animals and Plants under Domestication_, ii. 55, 240.

[64] _Ibid._, 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).

[65] See pp. 179-182, _Evolution and Disease_, by J. Bland Sutton, to
whom and to our mutual friend Dr. D. Thurston I am indebted for
information on various points.

[66] _Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication_, ii. 290; i.
454.

MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS.

TRUE RELATION OF PARENTS AND OFFSPRING.

It 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 probable that he has no more
definite or "part