s of extraordinary discovery, was not present to
their minds at all. In a word, the existence of such a science was
well nigh forgotten. It is true that in ancillary periodicals, as for
example those that treat of entomology or horticulture, or in the
writings of the already isolated systematists,[63] observations with
this special bearing were from time to time related, but the class of
fact on which Darwin built his conceptions of Heredity and Variation
was not seen in the highways of biology. It formed no part of the
official curriculum of biological students, and found no place among
the subjects which their teachers were investigating.

During this period nevertheless one distinct advance was made, that
with which Weismann's name is prominently connected. In Darwin's
genetic scheme the hereditary transmission of parental experience and
its consequences played a considerable role. Exactly how great that
role was supposed to be, he with his habitual caution refrained from
specifying, for the sufficient reason that he did not know.
Nevertheless much of the process of Evolution, especially that by
which organs have become degenerate and rudimentary, was certainly
attributed by Darwin to such inheritance, though since belief in the
inheritance of acquired characters fell into dispute, the fact has
been a good deal overlooked. The _Origin_ without "use and disuse"
would be a materially different book. A certain vacillation is
discernible in Darwin's utterances on this question, and the fact gave
to the astute Butler an opportunity for his most telling attack. The
discussion which best illustrates the genetic views of the period
arose in regard to the production of the rudimentary condition of the
wings of many beetles in the Madeira group of islands, and by
comparing passages from the _Origin_[64] Butler convicts Darwin of
saying first that this condition was in the main the result of
Selection, with disuse aiding, and in another place that the main
cause of degeneration was disuse, but that Selection had aided. To
Darwin however I think the point would have seemed one of dialetics
merely. To him the one paramount purpose was to show that somehow an
Evolution by means of Variation and Heredity might have brought about
the facts observed, and whether they had come to pass in the one way
or the other was a matter of subordinate concern.

To us moderns the question at issue has a diminished significance. For
over all such