The Trotting Horse

Abstract

IN “The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution,” Prof. Cope, whose recent death has taken from us an untiring worker and suggestive writer, adduces the evolution of the trotting horse as an illustrative case of the inheritance of characters due to the exercise of function (p. 426). Prof. Brewer, of Yale, is quoted at some length. He says: “There is every appearance and indication that the changes acquired by individuals through the exercise of function have been to some degree transmitted, and have been cumulative, and that this has been one factor in the evolution of speed. … There is nothing whatever in the actual phenomena observed anywhere along the line of this development of speed that would lead us to even suspect that the changes due to exercise of function had not been a factor in the evolution, and there is not a particle of evidence, other than metaphysical deductions, much less proof, that it would or could have gone on just the same by mere selection and adventitious variation” (pp. 429–430).