University of Virginia Library

INHERITANCE OF
ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS
(LAMARCKIAN)

This idea can be traced back to speculative philosophy
and even to primitive thought, if one is willing to fuzz
the difference between science and other types of
mental activity. The precise words, “inheritance of
acquired characters,” are not found until the eight-
eenth century, when they appeared as part of the first
efforts at a scientific understanding of heredity.

In folklore one can find many cases that we moderns
would lump under this concept, such as Shylock's
retelling in The Merchant of Venice (I, iii, 78ff.) of

There is a bit of rationality in bizarre stories of this
sort; an effort is being made to explain the appearance
of progeny surprisingly different from their parents.
Similarly the Russian peasant believes (reported by
Vakar, p. 274) that seeds of wheat can engender wild
oats. In painful fact peasants frequently see wheat turn
into weeds. Another source of such commonsense con-
fusions about heredity and variation is the observed
fact that well-fed livestock have better qualities than
ill-fed, which underlies the English farmer's paradox-
ical aphorism, “The breed is through the mouth.” On
the other hand, “Like father like son” is also a common
observation, sustained by such facts as the endless
reappearance of tails and foreskins on the progeny of
docked and circumcised sires. Shakespeare can be
quoted for this too:

(Hamlet, V, ii, 10).

In ancient and medieval philosophy one can also find
occasional speculations that we moderns would lump
under the concept, inheritance of acquired characters.
Thomas Aquinas, for example, drawing on previous
writers, analyzes human reproduction in such a way
as to explain how Adam's fall could taint all his
progeny with a capacity to sin. The most noteworthy
feature of Thomas' speculation, and of the other pre-
eighteenth-century authors quoted in Zirkle's massive
compilation, is their preoccupation not with heredity
but with generation (or reproduction, as we call it
nowadays). This physiological process, and the associ-
ated process of development from seed to adult, drew
attention to themselves long before heredity, the
elusive pattern of resemblances and differences be-
tween parents and progeny, was isolated for special
study. There are no obvious forms to be associated with
the function of heredity, as flowers and gonads are with
reproduction, or as seeds make one wonder how mighty
oaks from little acorns grow. The prolonged argument
over the inheritance of acquired characters, lasting
from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, was part
of the wakening to the problem of heredity.

Some historians date this wakening much earlier
than the eighteenth century. One author, Robert S.
Brumbaugh, goes so far as to say that scientific genetics
originated with the Pythagoreans (Journal of Heredity,
43, 86-88). A less extravagant modernization of ancient
texts is carried out by Darlington, who reads the clash
of “hard” (Mendelian) and “soft” (Lamarckian) hered-
ity into the rival speculations of Epicurus and Aristotle.
He is actually dealing with the philosophy of science
rather than the study of heredity. To reduce the pur-
poseful activity of living things to the nonpurposeful
action of material particles was Epicurus' mode of
reasoning as it is the modern geneticist's. From this
mechanistic viewpoint Aristotle's nonevolutionary

entelechy shares a fatal defect with Lamarck's evolu-
tionary inheritance of acquired characters. They are
both tainted by teleology; a future end is invoked as
the determinant of a present form or process. But such
correlations between ancient philosophical viewpoints
and modern scientific theories are a product of hind-
sight. To pretend that they were already apparent
before the rise of genetics is to put an undeserved
duncecap on a host of modern biologists, to render
inexplicable the enormous labor by which they moved
toward a precise understanding of heredity and varia-
tion.

The eighteenth-century effort to classify all living
things was the beginning of that labor. Defining the
essence or typical characters of each species, the
taxonomist was obliged to explain away the accidents
or nontypical characters of many individuals and entire
races that he included within a given species. Thus
the more complex problem of analyzing the pooled
heredity of a population was recognized long before
the more elemental one of analyzing individual hered-
ity, a common reversal of horse and cart that is proba-
bly unavoidable in the opening of a major new area
of inquiry. The same reversal marked pre-Mendelian
experiments with plant hybridization, which derived
from the eighteenth-century effort to achieve a scien-
tific agriculture, and, on the theoretical level, focused
once again on taxonomy: When hybrids are not sterile
“mules,” are they to be classified as new species? Such
problems, aggravated by the growing fossil evidence
of extinct species, led to the suggestion of a phylo-
genetic or evolutionary taxonomy, a dizzying proposal
to substitute patterns of ceaseless change for a clear-cut
classification of fixed species. In Diderot's apothegm,
“Species are only tendencies” (Rostand, p. 175).

One of the first biologists to make this bold proposal
was Jean Baptiste de Lamarck. To explain how new
species evolve out of old he invoked the common
observation that living things adapt themselves to their
environment, and added the supposition that such
adaptation, if repeated by many creatures over much
time, is finally transmitted to the progeny as an essen-
tial character of a new species. With the benefit of
hindsight we can see that the distinction between the
essential and accidental characters of supposedly fixed
species, and the distinction between the hereditary and
acquired characters of changing species, were groping
steps toward the distinction between genotype and
phenotype.

Largely ignored in his own lifetime, Lamarck's the-
ory was part of the sporadic discussion of evolution
during the generation preceding Darwin's Origin of
Species (1859). In the excited aftermath of that epochal
book the inheritance of acquired characters was not
immediately seen as a crucial issue, for Darwin's stroke
of genius was to separate the problem of a population's
pooled heredity, which is obviously shaped by natural
selection, from the problem of individual heredity and
variation, which was a mystery. Darwin himself soon
called attention to the necessity of solving the second
problem, but he perceived it in a form that was still
insoluble: What is the source of the variations on which
selection works?

He and other evolutionists indulged in rather
Lamarckian speculations on the subject, and experi-
mental tests were undertaken. Some had clearly nega-
tive results, as when blood transfusions between differ-
ent colored rabbits produced no change in coat color.
Some seem to have proved the obvious, as when
Weismann docked the tails of mice through twenty-two
generations without shortening the tail on any newborn
mouse. (It must be remembered that he was countering
many unverified reports of inherited mutilations.
Darwin himself published a report that the Muslims
of Celebes are born with shortened foreskins.) The few
experiments that seemed to prove the inheritance of
acquired characters were subject to disputed inter-
pretation, as when white moths, fed on the salts found
in soot, produced some black progeny. (This happened
in the twentieth century, and geneticists argued that
the original stock had melanism as a recessive trait.)
The important result of these experiments was the
accumulating doubt they cast on Lamarckian inherit-
ance, as they failed to prove beyond doubt a single
instance of it.

Darwin brushed aside obviously teleological versions
of Lamarckian inheritance—such as giraffes getting
long necks by many generations of stretching for the
higher leaves—but he saw no inconsistency between
other versions and the mechanistic outlook that under-
lay the theory of natural selection. Nor, for all we
know, did Mendel, whose contemporaneous stroke of
genius was also a simplifying separation of a soluble
problem from a tangle of insoluble ones. He set aside
not only the evolution of species, but even the adaptive
variation of individual organisms. He reduced the
analysis of individual heredity to a manageable level
by counting a few unchanging characters as they come
and go in various combinations through successive
generations of hybrids. Leading biologists overlooked
or brushed aside this radical suspension of their chief
concerns, until continued hybrid experiments and the
development of cytology pushed them toward a simi-
larly atomistic conception of heredity.

August Weismann proclaimed this conception in the
1880's, with a clarity and vigor that forced general
attention to it. He declared heredity to be the function
of self-replication localized in the “germ plasm,” the

nucleus of the specialized cells of sexual reproduction.
This was an erroneous first approximation to the mod-
ern cytogenetic view, which localizes the hereditary
function in the nucleus of all cells. Partly because of
his mistake Weismann was inspired to make a vigorous
attack on the inheritance of acquired characters, for,
he reasoned, it is the surrounding body that acquires
them, not the self-replicating germ plasm. The result
was a lively debate between “neo-Lamarckians,” who
argued that evolution was inconceivable without the
inheritance of acquired characters, and “neo-Darwin-
ians,” who denied it. The debate intensified efforts to
achieve a precise, experimentally founded under-
standing of heredity and variation, with the result that
Mendelian methods were simultaneously rediscovered
by three separate scientists in 1900, namely DeVries,
Tschermak, and Correns.

Thus the science of genetics was born, either denying
the inheritance of acquired characters (in the Weis-
mann version) or ignoring it as a meaningless concept
(in the Mendelian). Until the 1930's many biologists
nevertheless clung to some form of Lamarckism, for
genetics seemed too narrow, incapable of analyzing
anything but the simplest patterns of segregation and
recombination of unchanging hereditary characters
—and rather trivial ones at that, chosen for their
convenience in counting. By the 1930's geneticists
demonstrated their ability to deal with complex char-
acters as well as simple ones, to incorporate in their
theory the constant appearance of new characters, and
to analyze the pooled heredity of a breeding popula-
tion. The overwhelming majority of biologists then
abandoned any form of Lamarckism. Its mode of
reasoning, based on the distinction between inherited
and acquired characters, had proved to be hopelessly
vague and unproductive by contrast with that of ge-
netics, based on the distinction between genotype and
phenotype.

Aside from the Lysenkoites in the Soviet Union, the
only biologists who have tried to keep some version
of the Lamarckist view alive since the 1930's have been
a tiny minority, such as L. Bertalanffy and H. G. Can-
non, who are distressed by the implacable mechanism
of contemporary biology. The hopelessness of their
position is indicated by their lack of original ideas. For
the most part they grasp at aspects of their opponents'
work, such as the discovery of extrachromosomal in-
heritance, or at the arguments of geneticists like
C. H. Waddington, who has strained the limits of his
science in an effort to explain the “umbridgeable gaps”
and the grand, persistent trends of evolution. In short,
Lamarckism survives only as a portion of the vitalist
creed. Mechanist versions of Lamarckism, which were
fairly common from the late-nineteenth century
through the 1920's, have vanished, for genetics has
proved itself capable of solving the problems that gave
rise to mechanistic Lamarckism in the first place.

The biologists' abandonment of the inheritance of
acquired characters has been widely misinterpreted.
Many people think that any environmental influence
on heredity has been denied. In fact geneticists have
been the first to make precise analyses of such influ-
ences. They differ from the Lamarckists in denying the
“adequacy” or “specificity” of environmentally in-
duced change in the heredity of an individual organism.
That is, they deny that the hereditary mechanism of
a living creature can make an adaptive response to
an environmental influence, except by accident. On this
purely mechanistic basis they have shown how a mul-
titude of breeding individuals, a population, can and
do make finely adaptive changes of their pooled hered-
ity in response to environmental influences. Once these
basic principles were established by the usual interplay
of theorizing and experimentation, the inheritance of
acquired characters was seen to be either meaningless
or teleological. It is meaningless if it runs together such
diverse things as the effects of fertilizing plants and
the effects of radiating them. It is teleological if it
ascribes to an hereditary mechanism—ultimately a
molecule of nucleic acid—not only the function of
self-replication, but also foreknowledge of a different,
improved self. Thus, it is not environmental influence
on heredity but a confused or teleological view of such
influence that has been abandoned.

Other widespread misunderstandings concern the
relevance to social thought of the affirmation or denial
of the inheritance of acquired characters. Long a minor
aspect of the controversy about the social implications
of biology, these misunderstandings were widely in-
flated as a result of the Lysenko affair in the Soviet
Union. In 1936 the Soviet mass media began to de-
nounce the study of human genetics as a reactionary
pseudo-science, aristocratic, racist, or simply Nazi in
its social implications. The Lysenkoites, who were then
winning political support by their reputation for aid
to agriculture, quickly picked up this theme, and, in
the 1940's, added another: Marxism has always com-
mitted its adherents to belief in the inheritance of
acquired characters. Outside the Soviet Union aston-
ished defenders of genetics rejected the association
between genetics and the right, but many accepted
the linkage of Lamarckism and the left. It fit the wide-
spread picture of Marxism as an antiquated doctrine,
and it could be provided with a semblance of logic:
inheritance of acquired characters supposedly appeals
to the Marxist mentality by promising that revolu-
tionary improvement of the social environment will
improve the human breed. The awkward fact that the

Lysenkoites never used this logic was ignored. Their
actual arguments for a linkage between Marxism and
Lamarckism—a couple of quotations from Engels'
posthumous reflections on evolution, and a heavy stress
on the Marxist theory of “practice” exemplified in the
transformation of agriculture through Lysenkoite
methods—seemed too flimsy to be taken at face value.
Antiquated quackery could not improve farm yields;
the Soviet leaders seemed to be sacrificing agricultural
improvement out of devotion to Lamarckian faith in
human perfectibility. The awkward fact that such a
faith cannot be found in the basic writings of Marxist
theorists was also ignored.

Social theorists of any political persuasion have had
little to say on the inheritance of acquired characters,
since it has not usually seemed relevant to their main
concerns. This was the case even in the nineteenth
century, when many were trying to found social sci-
ence on biological principles. Comte, it is true, dis-
puted Lamarck's theory of evolution at considerable
length (Cours de philosophie positive, Vol. III), while
Spencer admired it, and continued to insist on the
inheritance of acquired characters even after he be-
came a preacher of natural selection. Other biologizing
social theorists can also be quoted on the inheritance
of acquired characters—Bagehot for, Kidd against,
others straddling—but in every case their stand on this
issue is part of their synthetic philosophizing, inessen-
tial to their social thought. Indeed the same criticism
can be extended from this subsidiary issue to all their
biological arguments, which were, as Robert Mackin-
tosh said, nothing more than “parables,” “metaphors,”
or “mere illustrations” of their social principles
(Mackintosh, 1899).

This criticism may be contested, but the facts of
political affiliation are indisputable. Biologizing social
theorists are bunched on the center and right of the
political gradient. Only a few are to be found on the
left, almost none on the Marxist left. Among the major
Marxist theorists Kautsky alone had a serious interest
in the biological aspects of social development, most
notably in population problems, and he strongly
endorsed the standard Marxist separation of biology
and sociology. Marxism in all its varieties has shown
an overwhelming tendency to ignore or reject any
derivation of sociological principles from biology. Each
discipline is considered autonomous, sharing only the
materialist philosophy that prompted Marx to hail
Darwin's Origin of Species as “the mortal blow to
teleology in natural science.” Using this line of argu-
ment Soviet Marxist geneticists in the 1920's and early
1930's pictured their science as a triumph of dialectical
materialist philosophy. Just before the rise of Lysenko
this was also the view of the leading Soviet Marxist
philosophers.

The argument that Marxist philosophy commits one
to belief in the inheritance of acquired characters was
virtually unknown until T. D. Lysenko presented it in
a 1941 paper, “Engels and Some Problems of Dar-
winism.” It was impossible to find any comment on
the subject in any publication of Marx or Lenin. Two
or three fleeting remarks are in the posthumous publi-
cations of Engels, and a few more in the works of some
other leading Marxist theorists, such as Kautsky,
Plekhanov, Bukharin, and Stalin. Some indicate ac-
ceptance of the Lamarckian view, some acceptance
of the Mendelian view, but none can reasonably be
interpreted as an important part of the author's social
theorizing. In each case the author was simply repeat-
ing the current biological theory, as far as he under-
stood it, and was quite far from any thought of deriving
a different theory of heredity from Marxist philosophy.

Even the rise of the eugenics movement, loosely
linked with the new science of genetics and heavily
tainted with contempt for the lower classes and the
subject races, did not provoke a Marxist reaction
against the science of genetics, or even against every
kind of eugenics. There was a minority of left-wing
eugenicists, such as the biologist K. A. Timiriazev, who
won a permanent place in the Soviet pantheon by
endorsing the Bolshevik Revolution. The first Commis-
sar of Public Health declared eugenics to be the long-
run goal of the Soviet health program, and subsidized
research in that field under the guidance of leading
geneticists. Within a few years friction developed over
a difference in values: Soviet eugenicists tended to
regard the intelligentsia as the repository of the best
genes, while Bolshevik officials conferred this distinc-
tion on the proletariat and peasantry. In this Soviet
version of the worldwide eugenics controversy during
the 1920's, science was hardly the issue, for genuine
knowledge of human genetics was slight, limited in the
main to rare hereditary diseases.

Eugenics was then either grossly ideological, as in
the preference for certain classes and races, or simply
pessimistic, postponing hopes of basic and permanent
improvement of the human condition until the distant
time when geneticists might know as much about
breeding humans as they already did about corn. By
the end of the twenties the Soviet authorities withdrew
their support of eugenics research, though still granting
the theoretical possibility of a socialist program of
eugenics. Research in human genetics continued,
oriented mainly toward medicine and psychology, until
the authorities decided that it too fostered disdain for
the lower classes, whose IQ's were generally below
those of the intelligentsia. Toward the end of 1936 the
study of human heredity was suddenly linked with Nazi
ideology and virtually suppressed, not to be revived
until the 1960's. In the interim no effort was made

to create a Lysenkoite theory of human heredity in
place of the Mendelian theory. The traditional Marxist
separation of biological and social processes was simply
taken to a ridiculous extreme. “Man,” declared
Lysenko, “thanks to his mind, ceased long ago to be
an animal.” Biological science, whether genuine or
pseudo, has nothing to say about such a creature.

Thus, it was not Marxist social theory that engen-
dered the Lysenkoite belief in the inheritance of
acquired characters. Neither was it the Lamarckist
tradition in biology. In the 1930's Lysenko indignantly
rejected his critics' assertion that he was a Lamarckist,
and with good reason (see Spornye voprosy genetiki i
selektsii. Raboty IV sessii VASKhNILa 19-27 dek.
1936g., Moscow [1937], pp. 57, 67, 327). He was almost
completely ignorant of any theoretical tradition in
biology. His views derived from practical sources, as
he never tired of boasting. In a time of acute agricul-
tural crisis, resulting from forced collectivization, he
was an agronomist with a flair for sensationalist public
relations. He achieved fame as a bold innovator of
agricultural techniques that were supposed to bring
great practical benefit, in striking contrast to the sup-
posedly barren record of orthodox scientists. First he
challenged plant physiologists, by claiming that he had
found a quick and easy way to boost grain yields
(moisten and chill the seed), and then he fell into war
with geneticists by promising to breed an improved
variety of wheat within three years or less. When
learned breeders and geneticists cautioned that several
generations of progeny testing are necessary to estab-
lish a desirable, stable hybrid, Lysenko angrily de-
nounced their academic learning as an impediment to
practical achievement. He insisted that he could choose
parent plants with foreknowledge of their progeny, and
that he could make a final selection from the first
generation of hybrids. These claims struck at the foun-
dation of Mendelian genetics.

Lysenko came to the inheritance of acquired char-
acters when he appropriated to his cause the vastly
inflated reputation of I. V. Michurin (1855-1935), an
uneducated breeder of fruit trees who believed in graft
hybrids. The inheritance of acquired characters became
a central belief of Lysenko's cult, for it enhanced his
picture of living matter as structureless goo, capable
of instant alteration to suit the needs of socialist
farmers. Gradually he and his followers disinterred
other obsolete doctrines and fancies, such as the possi-
bility of cells forming from noncellular globs of organic
matter, and the sudden transformation of wheat into
weeds. In 1948, when the Central Committee of the
Communist Party raised his power over biological
research and education to the highest level, he ac-
knowledged his kinship with Lamarckism. It was an
ex post facto decree, very unjust to many bygone
scientists who had entertained Lamarckist ideas in a
serious effort to solve scientific problems.

Lysenko's main problem was to maintain his reputa-
tion as a master of “agrobiology” (the term was his
invention). He promoted a series of flashy agronomic
recipes, which the political bosses and the press hailed
as the source of great increases in yields. The fact that
their value was denied by agronomists in non-
Communist countries did not undermine the faith of
Stalinist officials, who became extremely xenophobic
in the last part of his reign. They were not, however,
completely impervious to the usual empirical criteria.
A turning point came in 1952, when they recognized
the fiasco of “the Great Stalin Plan for the Trans-
formation of Nature,” which was based in part on
Lysenko's proposal to plant huge quantities of trees
and leave them to thin themselves. (He pictured the
weaker seedlings as removing themselves to help the
species flourish.) Public criticism of Lysenko was
allowed to revive, and became intensive after Stalin's
death, but Soviet officials did not withdraw all their
support from him until 1965. Then Lysenko was
pushed out of power into silent management of an
experimental farm, and Soviet geneticists received
strong support in their effort to repair the damage done
by thirty years of Lysenkoite mis-education.

It is a great puzzle how Soviet leaders could believe
for so long in the practical benefit of Lysenkoism. The
explanation is to be found in the Stalinist policy of
extracting agricultural produce by force. Since peasants
were poorly motivated and yields were generally low
no matter what farming methods were used, it would
have been hard to make an objective choice of farming
methods in any case. But Stalinist officials were op-
posed on principle to objective criticism of their deci-
sions. Only protracted stagnation of yields brought
them to a grudging retreat from farming by decree,
and from Lysenko's “agrobiology,” which cast an aura
of science over the Stalinist agricultural policy. The
method of determining truth by authoritarian trial and
error was justified by Stalin's doctrine that “practice”
is the supreme criterion of truth. In more precise
language, one learns by bossing. In some measure this
doctrine can be traced back to Lenin and even, though
with considerable straining, to Marx's belief in revolu-
tionary praxis. That is the only significant connection
between Lysenkoism and Marxist theory.

It is ironic that a Lamarckist view of human heredity
should be widely ascribed to the left, for it has probably
figured more often in the popular ideology of the right.
Aside from H. G. Wells, it is hard to think of a socialist
who has dreamed of improving the human breed by
transforming society. The characteristic attitude on the
left has been that the breed is basically sound; it needs
only a suitable environment to express its great poten-

tial. On the other hand, many apologists for ruling
classes and dominant races have argued that genera-
tions of subordination and illiteracy have made the
lower classes and subject races biologically inferior to
their social superiors. (Marvin Harris, in his Rise of
Anthropological Theory, recognizes this fact, yet in-
consistently repeats the association of Lamarckism with
the left.) Of course, it is also possible to begin by
denying the inheritance of acquired characters and still
arrive at the same upper-class master-race bias. One
has only to assume that place in the social hierarchy
is determined by genotypes. Either way we are obvi-
ously dealing with self-serving illogic, based on a blur-
ring of biological and sociological concepts.

The known facts and the genuine logic of the matter
can be summarized in two sentences: the Lamarckian
doctrine gives no logical support to the political right
or left, because it is factually wrong. Genetical science
supports nothing more than a vague equalitarianism,
because genuine knowledge of human heredity is
inadequate for anything more precise. As Theodosius
Dobzhansky and other geneticists have shown, biology
does not support the zealots of any class, nation, or
race. Its most important political implication so far
is the new support it gives to an old observation:
individual differences in hereditary capacities are far
more significant than average differences between
groups may prove to be.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For an introduction to various aspects of the topic, see
the relevant portions of the following works, which have
rich bibliographical leads to other studies and to the sources.
W. R. Coleman, “Cell, Nucleus, and Inheritance: An His-
torical Study,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society, 109 (1965), 124-58. L. C. Dunn, A Short History
of Genetics (New York, 1965). A. E. Gaisinovich, “U istokov
sovetskoi genetiki: bor'ba s lamarkizmom (1922-27),”
Genetika, 4, No. 6 (1968), 158-75. Verne Grant, The Origin
of Adaptations (New York, 1963). D. Joravsky, Soviet
Marxism and Natural Science, 1917-32 (New York, 1961);
idem, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). V. L.
Komarov, Lamark (Moscow, 1925), in idem, Izbrannye
sochineniia, 1 (1945); idem, “Lamark i ego nauchnoe
znachenie,” in Lamarck, Filosofia zoologii (Moscow, 1935),
1, xi-xcvii. Zh. A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D.
Lysenko (New York, 1969). R. C. Olby, Origins of Mendelism
(London, 1966). Jean Rostand, L'atomisme en biologie (Paris,
1956). Hans Stubbe, Kurze Geschichte der Genetik (Jena,
1965). C. Zirkle, “Early History of the Idea of the Inherit-
ance of Acquired Characters and of Pangenesis,” Transac-
tions of the American Philosophical Society, 335 (1946),
91-151.

Other works cited in this article include the following.
C. D. Darlington, “Purpose and Particles in the Study of
Heredity,” in E. A. Underwood, ed., Science, Medicine, and
History: Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought
(London, 1953), II, 472-81. Th. Dobzhansky, Mankind
Evolving (New Haven, 1962). Marvin Harris, The Rise of
Anthropological Theory (New York, 1968). T. D. Lysenko,
Agrobiologiia, 6th ed. (Moscow, 1952; English trans., 1954),
the largest collection of his works. Robert Mackintosh, From
Comte to Benjamin Kidd: The Appeal to Biology or Evolution
for Human Guidance (New York, 1899). I. V. Michurin,
Sochineniia, 4 vols. (Moscow, 1939-41; 2nd ed., 1948).
B. A. Vakar, Vazhneishie khlebnye zlaki (Novosibirsk, 1929).

DAVID JORAVSKY

[See also Biological Conceptions in Antiquity; Evolutionism;
Genetic Continuity; Inheritance through Pangenesis; Per-
fectibility.]