Heredity and Acquired Characters

Abstract

IN NATURE of November 25 there appears a long letter from Sir Archdall Reid on the subject of heredity. In this letter he seeks to show that the whole controversy about the inheritability of acquired characters—perhaps the controversy of most vital importance in biology—is a mere “pother” about “words full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” “All the characters of the individual,” he assures us, “are innate, acquired, and inheritable in exactly the same sense and degree.”