At the head of these important phenomena of progressive transmission, we may mention the law of adapted or acquired transmission. In reality it asserts nothing more than what I have said above, that in certain circumstances the organism is capable of transmitting to its descendants all the qualities which it has acquired during its own life by adaptation. This phenomenon, of course, shows itself most distinctly when the newly acquired peculiarity produces any considerable change in the inherited form. This is the case in the examples I mentioned in the preceding chapter as to transmission in general, in the case of the men with six fingers and toes, the porcupine men, copper beeches, weeping willows, etc. The transmission of acquired diseases, such as consumption, madness, and albinism, likewise form very striking examples. Albinoes are those individuals who are distinguished by the absence of colouring matter, or pigments, in the skin. They are of frequent occurrence among men, animals, and plants. In the case of animals of a definite dark colour, individuals are not unfrequently born which are entirely without colour, and in animals possessing eyes, this absence of pigment extends even to the eyes, so that the iris of the eye, which is commonly of a bright or intense colour, is colourless, but appears red, on account of the blood-vessels being seen through it. Among many animals, such as rabbits and mice, albinoes with white fur and red eyes are so much liked that they are propagated in great numbers as a special race. This would be impossible were it not for the law of the transmission of adaptations.
Which of the changes acquired by an organism are transmitted to its descendants, and which are not, cannot be determined à priori, and we are unfortunately not acquainted with the definite conditions under which the transmission takes place. We only know in a general way that certain acquired qualities are much more easily transmitted than others, for example, more easily than the mutilations caused by accidents. These latter are generally not transmitted by inheritance, otherwise the descendants of men who have lost their arms or legs would be born without the corresponding arm or leg; but here, also, exceptions occur, and a race of dogs without tails has been produced by consistently cutting off the tails of both sexes of the dog during several generations. A few years ago a case occurred on an estate near Jena, in which by a careless slamming of a stable door the tail of a bull was wrenched off, and the calves begotten by this bull were all born without a tail. This is certainly an exception; but it is very important to note the fact, that under certain unknown conditions such violent changes are transmitted in the same manner as many diseases.
In very many cases the change which is transmitted and preserved by adapted transmission is constitutional or inborn, as in the case of albinism mentioned before. The change then depends upon that form of adaptation which we call the indirect or potential. A very striking instance is furnished by the hornless cattle of Paraguay, in South America. A special race of oxen is there bred which is entirely without horns. It is descended from a single bull, which was born in 1770 of an ordinary pair of parents, and the absence of horns was the result of some unknown cause. All the descendants of this bull produced with a horned cow were entirely without horns. This quality was found advantageous, and by propagating the hornless cattle among one another, a hornless race was obtained, which at present has almost entirely supplanted the horned cattle in Paraguay. The case of the otter-sheep of North America forms a similar example. In the year 1791 a farmer, by name Seth Wright, lived in Massachusetts, in North America; in his normally formed flock of sheep a lamb was suddenly born with a surprisingly long body and very short and crooked legs. It was therefore unable to take any great leaps, and especially unable to leap across a hedge into a neighbour’s garden—a quality which seemed advantageous to the owner, as the territories were divided by hedges. It therefore occurred to him to transmit this quality to other sheep, and by crossing this ram with normally shaped ewes, he produced a whole race of sheep, all of which had the qualities of the father, short and crooked legs and a long body. None of them could leap across the hedges, and they therefore were much liked and propagated in Massachusetts.
A second law, which likewise belongs to the series of progressive transmissions, may be called the law of established or habitual transmission. It manifests itself in this, that qualities acquired by an organism during its individual life are the more certainly transmitted to its descendants the longer the causes of that change have been in action, and that this change becomes the more certainly the property of all subsequent generations the longer the cause of change acts upon these latter also. The quality newly acquired by adaptation or mutation must be established or constituted to a certain degree before we can calculate with any probability that it will be transmitted at all to the descendants. In this respect transmission resembles adaptation. The longer a newly acquired quality has been transmitted by inheritance, the more certainly will it be preserved in future generations. If, therefore, for example, a gardener by methodical treatment has produced a new kind of apple, he may calculate with the greater certainty upon preserving the desired peculiarity of this sort the longer he has transmitted the same by inheritance. The same is clearly shown in the transmission of diseases. The longer consumption or madness has been hereditary in a family the deeper is the root of the evil, and the more probable it is that all succeeding generations will suffer from it.
We may conclude the consideration of the phenomena of inheritance with the two very important laws of homotopic and contemporaneous transmission by inheritance. We understand by them the fact that changes acquired by an organism during its life, and transmitted to its descendants, appear in the same part of the body in which the parental organism was first affected by them, and that they also appear in the offspring at the same age as that at which they did so in the parent.
The law of contemporaneous or homochronous transmission, which Darwin calls the law of of “transmission in corresponding periods of life,” can be shown very clearly in the transmission of diseases, especially of such as are recognized as very destructive, on account of their hereditary character. They generally appear in the organism of the child at the time corresponding with that in which the parental organism contracted the disease. Hereditary diseases of the lungs, liver, teeth, brain, skin, etc., usually appear in the descendants at the same period, or a little earlier than they showed themselves in the parental organism, or were contracted by it. The calf gets its horns at the same period of life as its parents did. In like manner the young stag receives its antlers at the same period of life in which they appeared in its father or grandfather. In every one of the different sorts of vine the grapes ripen at the same time as they did in the case of their progenitors. It is well known that the time of ripening varies greatly in the different sorts; but as all are descended from a single species, this variation has been acquired by the progenitors of the several sorts, and has then been transmitted by inheritance.
The law of homotopic transmission, which is most closely connected with the last mentioned law, and which might be called the law of transmission in corresponding parts of the body, may also be very distinctly recognized in pathological cases of inheritance. Large moles, for example, or accumulations of pigment in several parts of the skin, tumours also, often appear during many generations, not only at the same period of life, but also in the same part of the skin. Excessive development of fat in certain parts of the body is likewise transmitted by inheritance. Above all, it is to be noted that numerous examples of this, as well as of the preceding law, may be found everywhere in the study of embryology. Both the law of homochronous and homotopic transmission are fundamental laws of embryology, or ontogeny. For these laws explain the remarkable fact that the different successive forms of individual development in all generations of one and the same species always appear in the same order of succession, and that the variations of the body always take place in the same parts. This apparently simple and self-evident phenomenon is nevertheless exceedingly wonderful and curious; we cannot explain its real causes, but may confidently assert that they are due to the direct transmission of the organic matter from the parental organism to that of the offspring, as we have seen above in the case of the process of transmission in general, by a consideration of the details of the various modes of reproduction.
Having thus, then, considered the most important laws of Inheritance, we now turn to the second series of phenomena bearing on natural selection, viz., to those of Adaptation or Variation. These phenomena, taken as a whole, stand in a certain opposition to the phenomena of Inheritance, and the difficulty which arises in examining them consists mainly in the two sets of phenomena being so completely intercrossed and interwoven. We are but seldom able to say with certainty—of the variations of form which occur before our eyes—how much is owing to Inheritance, and how much to Adaptation. All characters of form, by which organisms are distinguished, are caused either by Inheritance or by Adaptation; but as both functions are continually interacting with each other, it is extremely difficult for the systematic inquirer to recognize the share belonging to each of the two functions in the special structure of individual forms. This is, at present, all the more difficult, because we are as yet scarcely aware of the immense importance of this fact, and because most naturalists have neglected the theory of Adaptation, as well as that of Inheritance. The laws of Inheritance, which we have just discussed, as well as the laws of Adaptation, which we shall consider directly, in reality form only a small portion of the phenomena existing in this domain, but which have not as yet been investigated; and since every one of these laws can interact with every other, it is clear that there is an infinite complication of physiological actions, which are at work in the construction of organisms.
But now, as to the phenomenon of variation or adaptation in general, we must, as in the case of inheritance, view it as a quite universal, physiological fundamental quality of all organisms, without exception—as a manifestation of life which cannot be separated from the idea of organism. Strictly speaking, we must here also, as in the case of inheritance, distinguish between Adaptation itself and Adaptability. By Adaptation (Adaptio), or Variation (Variatio), we understand the fact that the organism, in consequence of influences of the surrounding outer world, assumes certain new peculiarities in its vital activity, composition, and form which it has not inherited from its parents; these acquired individual qualities are opposed to those which have been inherited, or, in other words, those which have been transmitted to it from its parents or ancestors. On the other hand, we call Adaptability (Adaptabilitas), or Variability (Variabilitas), the capability inherent in all organisms to acquire such new qualities under the influence of the outer world. (Gen. Morph. ii. 191.)
The undeniable fact of organic adaptation or variation is universally known, and can be observed at every moment in thousands of phenomena surrounding us. But just because the phenomena of variation by external influences appear so self-evident, they have hitherto undergone scarcely any accurate scientific investigation. To them belong all the phenomena which we look upon as the results of contracting and giving up habits, of practice and giving up practices, or as the results of training, of education, of acclimatization, of gymnastics, etc. Many permanent variations brought about by causes producing disease, that is to say, many diseases, are nothing but dangerous adaptations of the organism to injurious conditions of life. In the case of cultivated plants and domestic animals, variation is so striking and powerful that the breeder of animals and the gardener found their whole mode of proceeding upon it, or rather upon the interaction between these phenomena and those of Inheritance. It is also well known to every one that animals and plants, in their wild state, are subject to variation. Every systematic treatise on a group of animals or plants, if it were to be quite complete and exhaustive, ought to mention in every individual species the number of variations which differ more or less from the prevailing or typical form of the species. Indeed, in every careful systematic special treatise one finds, in the case of most species, mention of a number of such variations, which are described sometimes as individual deviations, and sometimes as so-called races, varieties, degenerate species, or subordinate species, and which often differ exceedingly from the original species, solely in consequence of the adaptation of the organism to the external conditions of life.