which possess more dark feathers than the rest, we ultimately produce an entirely white race. We hurry on what Nature does slowly.
The inheritance of acquired characters becomes very obvious in the following example: The Monera are the lowest living organisms known; they consist of a mass of protoplasm, and are still devoid of even a nucleus. They multiply simply by division; each half is like the other, and like the parent (which by this process has ceased to exist), except that each is smaller and has to grow. A certain Moneron, Protomyxa aurantiaca, is orange-coloured, and its offspring is from the beginning of the same colour, and this colour has been acquired by that kind of Monera-like protoplasm which thereby has become the species called Aurantiaca. We have no reason for assuming that there existed from the beginning of life not only colourless, but also red, orange, and other kinds of protoplasm. In these simplest of organisms the whole process of heredity
