Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and UtilityRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
First, as just observed, a brief account of my old experiences in this
field will serve to show what good reason I have for feeling the weight
of such negative evidence in favour of Continuity as arises from failure
to produce any good experimental evidence to the contrary. In the second
place, now that the question has become one of world-wide interest, it
would seem that even negative results deserve to be published for
whatever they may be worth on the side of Neo-Darwinism. Lastly, in the
third place, although the research yielded negative results in my hands,
it is perhaps not undesirable to state the nature of it, if only to
furnish suggestions to other physiologists, in whose hands the
experiments--especially in these days of antiseptics--may lead to a
different termination. Altogether I made thousands of experiments in
graft-hydridization (comprising bines, bulbs of various kinds, buds, and
tubers); but with uniformly negative results. With animals I tried a
number of experiments in grafting characteristic congenital tissues from
one variety on another--such as the combs of Spanish cocks upon the
heads of Hamburgs; also, in mice and rats, the grafting together of
different varieties; and, in rabbits and bitches, the transplantation of
ovaries of newly-born individuals belonging to different well-marked
breeds. This latter experiment seems to be one which, if successfully
performed (so that the transplanted ovaries would form their attachment
in a young bitch puppy and subsequently yield progeny to a dog of the
same breed as herself) would furnish a crucial test as to the
inheritance or non-inheritance of acquired characters. Therefore I
devoted to it a large share of my attention, and tried the experiment in
several different ways. But I was never able to get the foreign
ovary--or even any portion thereof--to graft. Eventually the passing of
the Vivisection Act caused me to abandon the whole research as far as
animals were concerned--a research, indeed, of which I had become
heartily tired, since in no one instance did I obtain any adhesion.
During the last few years, however, I have returned to these experiments
under a licence, and with antiseptic precautions, but with a similar
want of success. Perhaps this prolonged and uniformly fruitless
experience may now have the effect of saving the time of other
physiologists, by warning them off the roads where there seems to be no
thoroughfare. On the other hand, it may possibly lead some one else to
try some variation in the method, or in the material, which has not
occurred to me. In particular, I am not without hope that the
transplantation of ovaries in very young animals may eventually prove to
be physiologically possible; and, if so, that the whole issue as between
the rival theories of heredity will be settled by the result of a single
experiment. Possibly some of the invertebrata will be found to furnish
the suitable material, although I have been unable to think of any of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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