Note well, the fundamental assumption is that such acquired characteristics,--greater length of leg, or of neck, a coating of hair, a protective coloring, etc.,--however acquired, can be transmitted from the parent animal possessing them, to its offspring. The question arises: Can such characteristics be transmitted? And the students of heredity answer: They _cannot!_ I find in G. Archibald Reid _"Alcoholism, a Study in Heredity,"_ a lucid exposition of this subject. (Reid is a F. R. S. E. His book was published by T. Fisher Unwin, London, a few yars [tr. note: sic] ago.) "All the characters of a living being, every physical structure and every mental trait, may be placed in one of two categories. Either they are inborn or they are acquired. An inborn or innate character is one which, in common parlance, arises in the individual 'by nature.' Thus arms, legs, eyes, ears, head, etc., and all inborn characters. The child inherits them from his parent. But, if during its development, or after the completion of the development any one of the inborn characters of an individual is modified by some occurrence, the change thus produced is known as an acquired character, or, shortly, as an acquirement. "Thus all the effects of exercise are acquirements; for example the enlargement which exercise causes in muscles. The effects of lack of exercise are also acquirements; for example, the wasting of a disused muscle. "The effects of injury are acquirements; for example, the changes in a diseased lung or injured arm. Every modification of the mind is also an acquirement; for example, everything stored within the memory. "If a man be blinded by accident or disease, his blindness is acquired. But if he comes into the world blind, if he be blind by nature, his blindness is inborn. If a son be naturally smaller than his father, then his inferiority of size is inborn; but if his growth be stunted by ill health or lack of nourishment or exercise, his inferiority is acquired. "Lamarck held, as people in all ages have held, that characters acquired by parents are also transmissible to some extent, and that evolution results from their accentuation during succeeding generations. _Lamarck's theory is rejected totally by the modern followers of Darwin_. "Ten thousand men might break their fingers, yet among their offspring not one might have a crooked finger. Consider on the other hand for how many generations women have bored their ears and noses in India. Yet when is a girl born with ears and nose already pierced? For how many generations have we amputated the tails of terriers, and yet their tails are no shorter. It will then be perceived how overwhelming is the case against the doctrine of the transmission of acquirements.