Lamarck or Weismann?

The possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics -- that bone of contention around which so much of evolutionary conflict has raged for 100 years--has received new support from the work of Professor Paul Kammerer, of the University of Vienna, who has just demonstrated his findings before the Cambridge University Society of Natural History. The theory, first developed by Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), who held that changes in the individual due to altered needs and habits are passed on to descendants (e. g., the neck of the giraffe is long because its ancestors had to stretch to reach the foliage), was taken over in part by Darwin, who believed it to be one of the methods through which natural selection operates. Biologists then reacted from this doctrine until the opposite extreme was reached in August Weismann, whose theory that the germ-plasm of each generation is handed on and remains distinct from the body cells, logically excludes the transmission of acquired traits. Weismannism has held the field since 1890 and still dominates the thinking of most biologists.

Kammerer's chief experiments have been on fire salamanders with black and yellow spots. When taken from their natural habitat to yellow soil, they gradually lost their black color, and their offspring were all yellow. Kammerer also grew eyes in the sightless newt, which requires no eyes because it lives in greenish water depths. These results have been called in question by many biologists who claim that they are not instances of true inheritance, but merely of nutritive or chemical influences on the germ cells, the possibility of which is readily admitted.

The English scientists are apparently convinced, however. William Bateson, former professor of biology at Cambridge, and a confirmed Weismannist, visited Vienna and later made a public attack on Kammerer's theory. In the interest of fair play, 50 Cambridge professors subscribed money to bring Kammerer to England for a hearing. He had worked unrecognized for 20 years, and since the war his salary has been approximately $150 a year. He was on the point of being forced to give up his researches when the invitation came. Professors G. H. F. Nuttall and Thornley Gardner, of Cambridge, together with a number of other eminent men, have given prompt and generous acceptance to the Austrian's work, and some have called it the greatest biological discovery of the present century. Conservative scholars, however, are demanding more conclusive proof.