334 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



from increased or diminished performance of function, and those which 

 are directly due to nutrition and any of the other external influences 

 which act upon the body. Among the blastogertic characters, we 

 include not only all the changes produced by natural selection opera- 

 ting upon variations in the germ, but all other characters which result 

 from this latter cause." (p. 413.) 



"Weismann remarks that Niigeli has shown that even in so minute 

 a space as -j^ott °f a curj ic millimeter such an enormous number 

 (400,000,000) of " micellae " * may be present that the most diverse 

 and complicated arrangements become possible. It therefore follows 

 that the molecular structure of the germ plasm in the germ cells of 

 an individual must be distinguished from that of another individual 

 by certain differences, although these may be but small ; and it also 

 follows that the germ plasm of any species must differ from that of all 

 other species. (Weismann, p. 191.) It also follows, the author con- 

 tends, that the molecular structure of the germ plasm in all higher 



* The existence of such primary elements as these, which are supposed 

 to form the basis of organization of the protoplasm of cells, as well as the 

 physical basis of heredity, is insisted on by nearly all of the biologists who have 

 written on this subject. Professor Whitman, in an able article entitled 

 '.' The Inadequacy of the Cell Theory," states that Ernst Briieke in 1861 first 

 contended for the organization of the cell, and the existence of " smallest parts " 

 as the basis of this organization, quoting him as follows. " We must therefore 

 ascribe to living cells, in addition to the molecular structure of the organic 

 compounds which they contain, still another and otherwise complicated struc- 

 ture ; and this it is that we designate by the name organization." (Elementar- 

 organismen, p. 387. Wiener Sitzungsberichte, October 10, 1861, Band XLIV. 

 Heft 2, p. 381.) 



Whitman then goes on to say that " we have seen similar ideas reappear in 

 the 'physiological units' of Herbert Spencer, the 'gemmules' of Darwin, the 

 'micellae' of Niigeli, the ' plastiilules ' of Elsberg and Haeckel, the ' inotagmata' 

 [plasomes] of Wiesner, the ' idioblasts ' of Oscar Hertwig, and the ' biophores ' 

 of Weismann." 



Whitman contends that the secret of organization, growth, development, lies 

 not in cell formation, "but in those ultimate elements of living matter for 

 which idiosomes seems to me an appropriate name." He adds: "All growth, 

 assimilation, reproduction, and regeneration may be supposed to have their 

 seat in these fundamental elements. They make up all living matter, are the 

 bearers of heredity, and the real builders of the organism." (Journal of Mor- 

 phology, VIII. 639, 658, Boston, 1893. Compare also Weismann's "The Germ 

 Plasm," Introduction.) Here should be quoted the striking remark of Herbert 

 Spencer, " that sperm cells and germ cells are essentially nothing more than 

 vehicles in which are contained small groups of the physiological units in :* fit 

 state for obeying their proclivity towards the structural arrangement of the 

 species they belong to." (Piinciphs of Biology, I. 254.) 



