Nature of Hcrcditjj and Problem of Mechanism 319 



E. A. Minchin, as previously noted, lias taken the bull 

 by the horns in his address on The Ez*olutio7i of the Cell and 

 contended that the ehromosonies or their immediate ances- 

 tors, chromatic granules, were the primal organisms. Min- 

 chin's ideas deserve examining as an exam])le of where 

 elementalist speculation may lead even at this late day of 

 supposed fidehty to objective evidence. Minchin accepts the 

 classification of biologists made by a poet writing for Punch 

 into "cytoplasmists" and "chromatinists" and declares him- 

 self a "whole-hearted chromatinist." "All the results," he 

 says, "of modern investigations into the structure, physiol- 

 ogy, and behavior of cells on the one hand, and of the 

 various types of organisms grouped under the Protista, on~ 

 the other, . . . appear to me to indicate that the chromatin- 

 elements represent the primary and original living units or 

 individuals, and that the cytoplasm represents a secondary 

 })roduct." '* These "hypothetical primitive organisms" Min- 

 chin thought might well be called hiococci, the name used 

 by Mereschkowsky for certain primal beings imagined by 

 him. The author's desire to keep in sight, at least, of objec- 

 tive reality is obvious, and leads him to sa}' frankly, "We 

 have as yet no evidence of the existence of biococci at the 

 present time as free-living organisms." ^ How this admis- 

 sion fits in with the statement previously quoted about all 

 the results of modern investigations, he appears not to have 

 felt it necessary t« consider. Nor did he neglect to dwell 

 upon the similarity between these chromatin-elements, with 

 their continuity through simple division, and the germ-plasm. 

 This aspect of the subject appealed to him especially, and 

 some of his terminology is highly characteristic of the ele- 

 mentalist standpoint and especially instructive for the pres- 

 ent discussion. The conception which has become familiar 

 to us in late years that the germ-cells of the metazoa "throw 

 off, as it were," a soma, has a prominent place in Minchin's 

 comparison of the germ-plasm of multicellular organisms 



