The heredity of acquired characters in plants / by the Rev. Professor George Henslow.

  • Henslow, George, 1835-1925.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The heredity of acquired characters in plants / by the Rev. Professor George Henslow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I.] ORIGINS OF VARIATIONS 3 life, which bring about their production, before natural selection can do anything. But else¬ where in his article he says : These variations have no necessary fitness or correspondence to the changed conditions which have produced them. The last four words are apparently an echo from Darwin ; but they do not seem to agree with innate or spontaneous birth- variation or produced by natural selection. Though Darwin based his theory on individual differences, it would seem that Dr Wallace repudiates them as specific. He says : In securing the development of new forms in adaptation to the new environment, natural selection is supreme. Hence arises the real dis¬ tinction . . . between specific and non-specific or developmental characters. . . . The latter are due to the laws which determine the growth and development of the organism, and therefore rarely coincide exactly with the limits of a species. ^ With regard to definite variations, Sir E. R. Lankester is also at variance with Darwin. These are now regarded by him as what are called acquired characters ; which, he asserts, cannot be handed on by inheritance to a new generation. They are, he says, a direct re¬ action to the environment. ... It does not aifect the stirps, the inner reproductive germs. ^ Fortnightly Review, March, 1895, p. 444.