WEISMANN'S THEORY OF THE GERMPLASM 25 



daughter-ids. This method of division of the 

 germplasm plays the chief part in the trans- 

 formation of the egg into the adult. It has to 

 take place so that the numberless determinants, 

 or guiding particles, of the germplasm may be dis- 

 entangled and brought forward at the time and 



o o 



place necessary for them to guide the formations of 

 the determinates, or independently variable parts 

 of the adult body. 



To take an example : Weismann's hypothesis 

 requires that when the egg first divides into two, 

 the germplasm should divide into two halves, each 

 containing only one half of the total assemblage of 

 determinants. In each subsequent cell - division 

 this process of segregation is continued, so that the 

 ids, as the phases of embryonic growth occur, con- 

 tain more and more few different kinds of deter- 

 minants. Supposing the germplasm to be composed 

 of a million determinants at one stage, in the next 

 it would contain only half a million, and in the 

 next, again, only a quarter-million. In this manner 

 the architecture of the ids becomes simpler and 

 simpler, reaching the simplest conceivable con- 

 dition in the active cells of the adult body. In 

 these the germplasm consists only of the kind of 

 determinants peculiar to the cells in which they 

 lie ; and these determinants are broken up into 

 biophores, or bearers of cell qualities. 



' The disintegration of the germplasm,' says 

 Weismann, 1 ' is a wonderfully complicated process ; 

 it is a true " development," in which the idic stages 



1 TllC CrCT///X (/x// '; P1 K &S, 69. 



