G. J. Romanes.
He writes to his brother:
18 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, N.W.: Sunday.
My dearest James,—This theory, of the Non-Inheritance of Acquired Characters, is that nothing that can happen in the lifetime of the individual exercises any influence on its progeny; effects of use or disuse, for example, cannot be inherited, nor, therefore, can any adaptation to external conditions which are brought about in individual organisms. Natural selection thus can only operate in spontaneous variations of germ-plasm, choosing those variations which, when 'writ large' in the resulting organisms, are best suited to survive and transmit.
This is the most important question that has been raised in biology since I can remember, and one proof of an inherited mutilation would settle the matter against Weismann's theory. I am therefore also trying the mutilation of caterpillars at the Zoo, in the hope that a mutilation during what is virtually an embryonic period of life will be most likely to be transmitted, seeing that congenital variations are so readily transmissible, and that these are changes of a pre-embryonic kind.
All well and with much love, yours ever,
George.
Have you got the 'Contemporary Review' for June with my article on Darwinism? If not, I will send it.
Another bit of work was an investigation into the intelligence of the chimpanzee 'Sally' at the Zoological Gardens, which the following letter describes: