immense body of interesting facts showing the influence of food, of light, of temperature, of still water and moving water, of the atmosphere and its currents, of gravitation, and of other organisms, in modifying the forms and other characteristics of animals.[1] He believes that these various influences produce a direct and important effect, and that this effect is accumulated by inheritance; yet he acknowledges that we have no direct evidence of this, and there is hardly a single case adduced in the book which is not equally well explained by adaptation, brought about by the survival of beneficial variations. Perhaps the most remarkable case he has brought forward is that of the transformation of species of crustaceans by a change in the saltness of the water (see Fig. 35). Artemia salina lives in brackish water, while A. Milhausenii inhabits water which is much salter. They differ greatly in the form of the tail-lobes, and in the presence or absence of spines upon the tail, and had always been considered perfectly distinct species
Yet either was transformed into the other in a few generations, during which the saltness of the water was gradually altered. Yet more, A. salina was gradually accustomed to fresher water, and in the course of a few generations, when the water had become perfectly fresh, the species was changed into Branchipus stagnalis, which had always been considered to belong to a different genus on account of differences in the form of the antennae and of the posterior segments of the body (see Fig. 36). This certainly appears to be a proof of change of conditions producing a change of form independently of selection, and of that change of form, while remaining under the same conditions, being inherited. Yet there is this peculiarity in the case, that there is a chemical change in the water, and that this water permeates the whole body, and must be absorbed by the tissues, and thus affect the ova and even the reproductive
- ↑ The Natural Conditions of Existence as they Affect Animal Life. London, 1883.
