nts.'

"There is no doubt, however, that these experiments demand careful
consideration, but before they can claim scientific recognition,
they must be subjected to rigid criticism as to the precautions
taken, the nature and number of the control experiments, etc.

"Up to the present time such necessary conditions have not been
sufficiently observed. The recent experiments themselves are only
described in short preliminary notices, which, as regards their
accuracy, the possibility of mistake, the precautions taken, and the
exact succession of individuals affected, afford no data on which a
scientific opinion can be founded" (pp. 81, 82).

The line Professor Weismann takes, therefore, is to discredit the
facts; yet on a later page we find that the experiments have since
been repeated by Obersteiner, "who has described them in a very
exact and unprejudiced manner," and that "the fact"--(I imagine that
Professor Weismann intends "the facts")--"cannot be doubted."

On a still later page, however, we read:--

"If, for instance, it could be shown that artificial mutilation
spontaneously reappears in the offspring with sufficient frequency
to exclude all possibilities of chance, then such proof [i.e. that
acquired characters can be transmitted] would be forthcoming. The
transmission of mutilations has been frequently asserted, and has
been even recently again brought forward, but all the supposed
instances have broken down when carefully examined" (p. 390).

Here, then, we are told that proof of the occasional transmission of
mutilations would be sufficient to establish the fact, but on p. 267
we find that no single fact is known which really proves that
acquired characters can be transmitted, "_for the ascertained facts
which seem to point to the transmission of artificially produced
diseases cannot be considered as proof_." [Italics mine.] Perhaps;
but it was mutilation in many cases that Professor Weismann
practically admitted to have been transmitted when he declared that
Obersteiner had verified Brown-Sequard's experiments.

That Professor Weismann recognizes the vital importance to his own
theory of the question whether or no mutilations can be transmitted
under any circumstances, is evident from a passage on p. 425 of his
work, on which he says: "It can hardly be doubted that mutilations
are acquired characters; they do not arise from any tendency
contained in the germ, but are merely the reaction of the bo