Lamarck and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. What Lamarck claimed was the inheritance of characteristics acquired through effort, or will. Weismann conducted the experiment of removing the tails of 68 white mice, repeatedly over 5 generations, and reporting that no mice were born in consequence without a tail or even with a shorter tail. He stated that "901 young were produced by five generations of artificially mutilated parents, and yet there was not a single example of a rudimentary tail or of any other abnormality in this organ." Weismann was aware of the limitations of this experiment, and made it clear that he embarked on the experiment precisely because, at the time, there were many claims of animals inheriting mutilations (he refers to a claim regarding a cat that had lost its tail having numerous tail-less offspring). There were also claims of Jews born without foreskins. None of these claims, he said, were backed up by reliable evidence that the parent had in fact been mutilated, leaving the perfectly plausible possibility that the modified offspring were the result of a mutated gene. The purpose of his experiment was to lay the claims of inherited mutilation to rest. The results were consistent with Weismann's germ plasm theory. Awards He was awarded the Linnean Society of London's Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1908. Publications by Weismann 1868. Über die Berechtigung der Darwin'schen Theorie: Ein akademischer Vortrag gehalten am 8. Juli 1868 in der Aula der Universität zu Freiburg im Breisgau. Engelmann, Leipzig. 1872. Über den Einfluß der Isolierung auf die Artbildung. Engelmann, Leipzig. 1875. Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie. I. Ueber den Saison-Dimorphismus der Schmetterlinge. Leipzig. 1876. Studien zur Descendenztheorie: II. Ueber die letzten Ursachen der Transmutationen. Leipzig. 1883. Die Entstehung der Sexualzellen bei den Hydromedusen: Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss des Baues und der Lebenserscheinungen dieser Gruppe. Fischer, Jena. 1883. 1883. 1885. Die Continuität des Keimplasmas als Grundlage einer Theorie der Vererbung. Fischer, Jena. 1887. Zur Frage nach der Vererbung erworbener Eigenschaften. In: Biol. Zbl. 6:33–48 1887. Über die Zahl der Richtungskörper und über ihre Bedeutung für die Vererbung. Fischer, Jena. 1889 Translations: Essays upon Heredity Oxford Clarendon Press – Full online text 1892. Das Keimplasma: eine Theorie der Vererbung. Fischer, Jena. 1893 Translation: Germ-Plasm, a theory of Heredity Charles Scribner's Sons – Full online text 1892. Aufsätze über Vererbung und angewandet biologische Fragen. Fischer, Jena. 1893. Die Allmacht der Naturzüchtung: eine Erwiderung an Herbert