"These results were obtained before the recent discussion of the question commenced, and joined with the other evidence entirely dispose of those arguments which Prof. Weismann bases on facts furnished by the social insects.">[
The other piece of additional evidence I have referred to, is furnished by two papers contributed to The Journal of Anatomy and Physiology for October 1893 and April 1894, by R. Havelock Charles, M. D., &c. &c., Professor of Anatomy in the Medical College, Lahore. These papers set forth the differences between the leg-bones of Europeans and those of the Punjaub people—differences caused by their respective habits of sitting in chairs and squatting on the ground. He enumerates more than twenty such differences, chiefly in the structures of the knee-joint and ankle-joint. From the résumé of his second paper I quote the following passages, which sufficiently show the data and the inferences:—
"7. The habits as to sitting postures of Europeans differ from those of their prehistoric ancestors, the Cave-dwellers, &c., who probably squatted on the ground.
"8. The sitting postures of Orientals are the same now as ever. They have retained the habits of their ancestors. The Europeans have not done so.
"9. Want of use would induce changes in form and size, and so, gradually, small differences would be integrated till there would be total disappearance of the markings on the European skeleton, as no advantage would accrue to him from the possession of facets on his bones fitting them for postures not practised by him.
"10. The facets seen on the bones of the Panjabi infant or fœtus have been transmitted to it by the accumulation of peculiarities gained by habit in the evolution of its racial type—in which an acquisition having become a permanent possession, 'profitable to the individual under its conditions of life,' is transmitted as a useful inheritance.
"11. These markings are due to the influence of certain positions, which are brought about by the use of groups of muscles, and they are the definite results produced by actions of these muscles.
"12. The effects of the use of the muscles mentioned in No. 11 are transmitted to the offspring, for the markings are present in the fœtus-in-utero, in the child at birth, and in the infant.
"13. The markings are instances of the transmission of acquired characters, which heritage in the individual, function subsequently develops."
No other conclusion appears to me possible. Panmixia, even were it not invalidated by its unwarranted assumption as above shown, would be out of court: the case is not a case of either increase or decrease of size but of numerous changes of form. Simultaneous variation of co-operative parts cannot be alleged, since these co-operative parts have not changed in one way but in various ways and degrees. And even were it permissible to suppose that the required different variations had taken place simultaneously, natural selection cannot be supposed to have operated. The assumption would imply that in the struggle for existence, individuals of the European races who were less capable than others of crouching and squatting, gained by those minute changes of structure which incapacitated them, such advantages that their stirps prevailed over other stirps—an absurd supposition.