Vol. XX I If. June, 1912. No. i 



BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN 



THE PROCESS OF REPRODUCTION IN ORGANISMS. 



C. M. CHILD. 



The present trend of certain lines of biological thought and 

 investigation is toward the conclusion that the process of sexual 

 reproduction in organisms is something unique and associated 

 with a peculiar substance, the germ plasm. This substance is 

 often regarded as self perpetuating, as "continuous" and as 

 independent, except for nutrition, of the organism or soma in 

 which it lives as a sort of parasite and it is the repository of all 

 heritable capacities or characteristics. According to this view 

 the problem of heredity is a problem of the germ plasm and of 

 the germ plasm alone. We are all familiar w T ith the attempts 

 which have been made to interpret the phenomena of asexual 

 reproduction and of regulation with the aid of this hypothesis 

 and the difficulties which these interpretations have encountered 

 are matters of biological history. Moreover, about this hy- 

 pothesis has grown up a great mass of involved speculation which 

 to many constitutes the foundation of modern biology and which 

 is often accepted as fact rather than hypothesis. 



My own lines of investigation and thought have led me to the 

 belief that this germ plasm hypothesis and the subsidiary hy- 

 potheses which have grown up about it are not only unnecessary 

 and constitute an impediment to biological thought which has 

 retarded its progress in recent years to a very appreciable extent, 

 but furthermore, that they are not in full accord with observed 

 facts and can be maintained only so long as w r e ignore the facts. 

 The present paper is an attempt to show that a logical and far 

 more simple theory of reproduction and inheritance is possible 

 on a basis which does not involve so many assumptions of doubt- 

 ful value and which does agree with the facts of observation. 



