1893.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 83 



having entertained similar opinions. But to recur to my point, it is 

 clearly certain that the partially double body of the parent in this 

 case must have influenced the germs it inclosed at some time in the 

 history of the race, or at the time the latter was originated by the 

 Orientals. The first partially double, monstrous pair of gold-fishes 

 to have offspring must have been reared somewhere in the East ; 

 whether in Corea, China or Japan does not matter. The fact that 

 they reproduced themselves is indisputable. That they were first 

 produced by artificial interference with, or mutilation of the normal 

 processes of their early development becomes, in the light of what 

 has been said above, a conclusion of the utmost probability. Weis- 

 mann and his followers can take either horn of this dilemma. The 

 inevitable conclusions are : first, that new parts of the parent body 

 at a distance do at once, in the first generation, influence the germ- 

 cells inclosed by such a parent body ; secondly, the probability of 

 the inheritance of the effects of certain mutilations, injuries, interfer- 

 ences or displacement of parts, during the early stages of develop- 

 ment, amounts almost to a certainty. 



Moreover, whereas the separation of the early cells or blastomeres 

 in certain eggs, such as those of Armadilloes, Sea-Urchins and the 

 Lancelet and Frog is possible, the egg in these cases being essen- 

 tially holoblastic at the time of the first two cleavages, two or more 

 completely separate embryos can be developed. The conditions of 

 development, it must be borne in mind, in the higher series, where a 

 blastoderm is developed, closely and firmly adherent to ; the very 

 large, nutritive yolk, are very different from the foregoing. So dif- 

 ferent indeed, are the conditions of development in these latter mer- 

 oblastic forms that it would be extremely improbable that entirely 

 separate and multiple embryos could be developed from their ova. 

 At most only such mechanical disturbances would be possible as 

 would lead to a more or less complete duplication, triplication, etc. 

 of embryos. That the effects of such embryonic mutilations or 

 interferences may be hereditarily transmitted will hardly be admit- 

 ted by theauti-mutilationists, but to evade the force of these facts 

 is impossible. 



The coherence of the embryos together in meroblastic eggs, con- 

 ditioned as it is by the interfacial and free surface-tensions between 

 the blastoderm and yolk, is, it seems to me, plainly indicative of the 

 indisputable conclusion that mutilational influences operating upon 

 meroblastic ova are themselves influenced by mere physical condi- 



