Dr. Kammerer's Testimony to the Inheritance of Acquired Characters

Abstract

PROF. MACBRIDE'S letter in NATURE for May 22 last calls for some statement from me. When, in 1910, I was engaged in writing those chapters of my book, “Problems of Genetics” (1913), which deal with the effects of changed conditions in producing genetic variation, I endeavoured to form an opinion as to the validity of the cases usually claimed in recent years as having given positive results. I had no difficulty in showing that nearly all this evidence is unsubstantial. The copious and astonishing observations said to have been witnessed by Prof. Tower, of Chicago University, and by Dr. Kammerer, of the Vienna Versuchsanstalt, naturally called for exceptionally careful examination. The results of both these authors had been very widely accepted, and had begun to pass current in the text-books. In the case of Prof. Tower's paper, as I demonstrated in my book, close textual criticism revealed features which suggested that implicit confidence should be postponed pending confirmation—a conclusion to which I had already come when, on a visit to Chicago in 1907, I had seen illustrative specimens which Prof. Tower was good enough to show me. Prof. Tower's results are still quoted (e.g. by Babcock and Clausen in their recent text-book, 1918), but we have for some years awaited fresh light on the facts or any explanation of the difficulties to which I directed attention.