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
"A case which I have myself recently investigated
experimentally seems to me to support very strongly the theory
of the inheritance of acquired characters, I have shown that in
normal flat-fishes, if the lower side be artificially exposed
to light for a long time, pigmentation is developed on that
side; but when the exposure is commenced while the specimens
are still in process of metamorphosis, when pigment-cells are
still present on the lower side, the action of light does not
prevent the disappearance of these pigment-cells. They
disappear as in individuals living under normal conditions, but
after prolonged exposure pigment-cells reappear. The first fact
proves that the disappearance of the pigment-cells from the
lower side in the metamorphosis is an hereditary character, and
not a change produced in each individual by the withdrawal of
the lower side from the action of light. On the other hand, the
experiments show that the absence of pigment-cells from the
lower side throughout life is due to the fact that light does
not act upon that side, for, when it is allowed to act,
pigment-cells appear. It seems to me the only reasonable
conclusion from these facts is, that the disappearance of
pigment-cells was originally due to the absence of light, and
that this change has now become hereditary. The pigment-cells
produced by the action of light on the lower side are in all
respects similar to those normally present on the upper side of
the fish. If the disappearance of the pigment-cells were due
entirely to a variation of the germ-plasm, no external
influence could cause them to reappear, and, on the other hand,
if there were no hereditary tendency, the colouration of the
lower side of the flat-fish when exposed would be rapid and
complete."--_Natural Science_, Oct. 1893.
During a period of thirty years Brown-Séquard bred many thousands of
guinea-pigs as material for his various researches; and in those whose
parents had not been operated upon in the ways to be immediately
mentioned, he never saw any of the peculiarities which are about to be
described. Therefore the hypothesis of coincidence, at all events, must
be excluded. The following is his own summary of the results with which
we are concerned:--
1st. Appearance of epilepsy in animals born of parents which had
been rendered epileptic by an injury to the spinal cord.
2nd. Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parents which
had been rendered epileptic by section of the sciatic nerve.
3rd. A change in the shape of the ear in animals born of parents in
which such a change was the effect of a division of the cervical
sympathetic nerve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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