In the course of individual development, inherited characters appear, in general, earlier than adaptive ones, and the earlier a certain character appears in ontogeny, the further back must lie in time when it was acquired by its ancestors.
![In the course of individual development, inherited characters appear, in general, earlier than adaptive ones, and the earlier a certain character appears in ontogeny, the further back must lie in time when it was](http://cdn.quoteddaily.com/images/ernst-haeckel/in-the-course-of-individual-development-inherited-characters-appear-in-general-earlier-than-adaptive-ones-and-the-earlier-a-certain.jpg)
In the course of individual development, inherited characters appear, in general, earlier than adaptive ones, and the earlier a certain character appears in ontogeny, the further back must lie in time when it was acquired by its ancestors.