For the rest, the significance of Mr. Darwin's address resides
largely in his championship of the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters so vigorously impeached by Weismann and other distinguished men of science. Some of his hearers, be admitted, might regard this as a lost cause, but he was con- vinced that the inherent strength of the doctrine would ensure its final victory over the present anti-Darwinian stream of criticism. His own researches led him to regard the " mnemic hypothesis" as of universal application, and convinced him that somatic inheritance lay at the root of all evolution. The reactions of organisms to natural stimuli were not momentary in effect, but produced permanent or morphological changes, and he believed this to be true of plants as well as animals. Mr. Darwin's interesting address was not only largely con- cerned with heredity, but in itself afforded a most remarkable instance of psychological inheritance transmitted through four generations.
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