44 GERMINAL SELECTION. 



that in itself, it seems to me, is a decided gain. It 

 must also not be forgotten that some process or other 

 must take place in the germ-plasm when an organ 

 becomes rudimentary, and that as the result of it this 

 organ, and only this organ, must disappear. Now in 

 what shall this process consist, if not in a modification 

 of the constitution of the germ? And how could the 

 effect of such a modification be limited only to one 

 organ which was becoming rudimentary if the modi- 

 fication itself were not a local one? These are ques- 

 tions which it is incumbent on those to answer who 

 conceive the germinal substance to be composed of like 

 units. 



Applying, now, the explanation derived from the dis- 

 appearance of organs to the opposed transformation, 

 namely, to the enlargement of a part, the presumption 

 lies close at hand that the production of the long tail- 

 feathers of the Japanese cock does not repose solely on 

 the displacement directly effected by personal selection, 

 of the zero-point of variation upwards, but that it is 

 also fostered and strengthened by germinal selection. 

 Were that not so, the phenomena of the transmuta- 

 tion of species, in so far as fresh growth and the en- 

 largement and complication of organs already present 

 are concerned, would not be a whit more intelligible 

 than they were before. We should know probably 

 how it comes to pass that the constitutional predis- 

 position (group of determinants) of a single organ is 

 intensified by selection, but the flood of objections 

 against the theory of selection touching its inability 

 to modify many parts at once would not be repressed 

 by such knowledge. The initial impulse conditioning 

 the independent maintenance of the useful direction 

 of variation in the germ-plasm must rather be sought 



