The Supposed Inheritance of Acquired Characters

Abstract

DR. FRANCIS DARWIN, in his presidential address before the British Association, writes as follows:— "Fischer showed that when chrysalids of Arctia caja are subjected to a low temperature a certain number of them produce dark-coloured insects; and further that these moths mated together yield dark-coloured offspring. This has been held to prove somatic inheritance, but Weismann points out that it is explicable by the low temperature having an identical effect on the colour-determinants existing in the wing-rudiments of the pupa, and on the same determinants occurring in the germ-cells".