Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace.

  • Alfred Russel Wallace
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    XV] Heredity and Environment preserved. But as the permanent teeth are always fully formed while buried in the jawbones and covered by the gums, it is quite certain that the special adaptation of the teeth of each species to seize, crush, tear, or grind up its particular food can¬ not possibly have been produced by the act of feeding, the effect of which is almost always to grind away the teeth and render them less serviceable. Such adaptation could not possibly have been produced by use alone, or any other direct action of the environment. Yet, as the adapta¬ tion is clear, and often very remarkable, some eminent palaeontologists have de¬ clared it to be proved that the changes in them were produced by the changes in the environment, and that they con¬ stitute very strong evidence of the inheritance of acquired characters —a statement unsupported by any direct evidence. The same objection applies to most of the special organs of sense. The internal organ of hearing is a highly complex series of bones and membranes, protected by the outer ear ; but it cannot be even imagined to have been gradually deve¬ loped by the action of the air waves the 107
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