Abstract
MR. BACOT'S suggestion with regard to the cessation of natural selection in relation to the bleaching of cave animals has been fully dealt with by Prof. Eigenmann himself in the work under review. It will be only fair to Prof. Eigenmann to quote his own words:—“Panmixia can not account for the discharge of the colour, since it returns in some species when they are exposed to the light and disappears to a certain extent in others when kept in the dark. Panmixia, Romanes thinks, may have helped to discharge the colour. In many instances the colour is a protective adaptation, and therefore maintained by selection. Panmixia might, in such instances lower the general average to what has been termed the ‘birth-mean.’ Proteus is perhaps such an instance. But in this species the bleached condition has not yet been hereditarily established, and since each individual is independently affected, ‘the main cause of change must have been of that direct order which we understand by the term climatic.’ Since, however, the bleached, condition, which in the first instance is an individual reaction to the absence of light, has become hereditarily established, in Amblyopsis so that the bleaching goes on even, when the young are reared in the light, it is evident that in Amblyopsis we have the direct effect of the environment on the individual hereditarily established.”
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DENDY, A. The Inheritance of Acquired Characters. Nature 82, 98 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/082098b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082098b0
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