Excerpt from Use-Inheritance: Illustrated by the Direction of Hair on the Bodies of Animals
It is proposed in the following pages to attempt to show that certain inherited characters of animals can only be interpreted by considering them to have arisen in ancestors of those animals by use or habit This proposition amounts to a denial of the universal validity of Weismannism, as an articulated system of heredity, which is nothing if not universal The larger question, now more than a century old, as to the value of Lamarckian factors in organic evolution, is not touched upon here. Lamarck is not without his able champions, even in these days when Selection has established for itself in the minds of biologists an astonishing ascendency. It must indeed be admitted that a remarkable difficulty has been found hitherto in showing that the effects of habit, use, and disuse in certain individuals are inherited by their descendants. All the various forms of mutilation of animals and man practised from time immemorial have failed hitherto to furnish cases of such mutilations being transmitted by descent. All the facts of use and disuse of parts or organs, and their effects on individuals, have hitherto been open to selectionist interpretations, and even the inheritance of certain diseases in man has been stoutly challenged. The cases hitherto recorded seem to be summed up, by authority, as a "handful of anecdotes."
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Use-Inheritance (Walter Aubrey Kidd)