Excerpt from Organic Evolution: As the Result of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters According to the Laws of Organic Growth

When the mother was between six and ten years old, her ear-ring was accidentally torn out, and the lobe of the ear was split from the hole through which the ring passed down to its edge. After the two divided surfaces had healed together, a cleft was left round the external edge of the wound. Weismann gives a woodcut of each ear, taken from a photograph, indicating by reference letters the corre sponding parts in the two figures, and then proceeds to argue that the cleft in the son's ear has really nothing to do with the lobe at all, but is situated between the true lobe and the termination of the helix: I do not require to appeal to experienced human anatomists to support my contention that W'eismann has made an erroneous identification of the parts of the son's ear in order to suit his own argument. His own figures are sufficient to prove this to any fair-minded man who knows something of anatomy. In the first place, the line of attachment in the figure of the mother's ear is inclined downwards to the left, in the son's to the right, in consequence of which, of course, the apparent difference between the two clefts is increased. Secondly, the lower end of the helix, marked 529. H in the mother's ear, is not marked at all in the son's, the same letters in the latter pointing to the right half of the lobe of the, ear, separated from the left half by a cleft closely corresponding to that in the mother's ear. The only difference between the shape of the lobe in the son's ear and that in the mother's is that in the former the outer half of the lobe is shorter and smaller than the inner, while in the mother's ear they are about equal: a difference which I present to Professor Weismann to make what use of he pleases.

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