Abstract
DR. ARCHDALL REID is usually so luminous in his statements concerning heredity that I hesitate to express my disagreement with what he has written in NATURE of February 29, and elsewhere previously, as to the use of the term “acquired characters”. It is, of course, true with regard to this term, as with regard to a great many others, that it can be interpreted to mean what its original user, namely, Lamarck, did not mean. But I cannot see that anything is gained by so doing. On the contrary, in such cases it seems to me best to endeavour to keep the term for what its introducer meant by it. I also fail to see any advantage in grouping together the various necessary chemical and physical environments of a living thing under the word “stimuli”. They do not become changed in nature by the application to them of that term, which is customarily used with more limited application.
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LANKESTER, E. Acquired Characters and Stimuli. Nature 89, 61 (1912). https://doi.org/10.1038/089061a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/089061a0
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