(3) It is common to beg the question by pointing to the transmission of
some character that is not proved to be a modification. Herbert Spencer
cited the prevalence of short-sightedness among the "notoriously
studious" Germans as a defect due to the inheritance of an acquired
character. But he offered no evidence that this is an acquirement rather
than a germinal character. As a fact, there is reason to believe that
weakness of the eyes is one of the characteristics of that race, and
existed long before the Germans ever became studious--even at a time
when most of them could neither read nor write.
(4) The reappearance of a modification may be mistaken for the
transmission of a modification. Thus a blond European family moves to
the tropics, and the parents become tanned. The children who grow up
under the tropical sun are tanned from infancy; and after the
grandchildren or great-grandchildren appear, brown from childhood, some
one points to the case as an instance of permanent modification of
skin-color. But of course the children at the time of birth are as white
as their distant cousins in Europe, and if taken back to the North to be
brought up, would be no darker than their kinsmen who had never been in
the tropics.
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