This is indeed, a poser. But any rejoicing by Weismann’s opponents is quite premature. The sagacity which set those opponents by the ears is still available. There is no attempt to untie that knot; Weismann cuts it with a knife. He empties his antagonist’s sails by a smiling and gracious surrender. Below the sexually reproducing animals, he concedes the operation of the Lamarckian factor. In that unicellular world it is not a special cell that is passed on but the individual itself is continued, and of course any character acquired by the individual will be preserved along with the individual. Thus then the region of controversy is limited to sexually reproducing organisms and we come to the field where the fiercest fight was made. Do these organisms transmit by heredity those characters or peculiarities acquired by the individual during its own life-time? To this question the Neo-Lamarckians gave a positive affirmative, which Weismann met with an unwavering denial. Weismann challenged his opponents to produce a single demonstration of such a transmission. Here let us be clear as to what is meant by an acquired character. For illustration, let us suppose a father leaves his son an estate of a thousand acres. That is inheritance. If the son leaves his son the same one thousand acres, that is still inheritance. But if that son increases the estate, during his life-time to two thousand, the second thousand is an “acquired character” of a property nature. There the analogy ceases for there is no dispute as to his ability to transmit both thousands to his heirs by inheritance. But with “acquired characters” of a biological nature, Weismann maintains this to be impossible. Many specific instances were put forward in refutation of this contention. Herbert Spencer cited the case of the supposed degeneration of the little toe in civilized man as a result of the shoe wearing habit. This it was urged could only have occurred through the transmission of acquired characters and not by natural selection as this diminished toe could not be of any value in the struggle for existence. But it was shown by measuring the feet of savages, who do not wear shoes, and whose ancestors never wore them, that the small toes of savages had degenerated quite as much.