388 The Study of Environment [Mar. 



Organs retained their alpine characters. The slight modifications 

 undergone by these features were seen to reach a maximum and to 

 decrease in the latest generations cultivated. The structural changes 

 and implied functional changes are originally direct somatic re- 

 sponses; there is no escape from the conclusions that the impress 

 of the alpine climate on the soma has been communicated to the 

 germ-plasm in such a manner as to be transmissible, and the Sug- 

 gestion lies near that repeated and continued excitation by climatic 

 factors may have been the essential factor in such fixation." It is 

 rather curious to see MacDougal treating this as a case of direct 

 effect of environment when it is quite as possible to explain it on 

 the assumption that the alpine characters had become fixed in the 

 alleged two thousand years by spontaneous, indiscriminate Varia- 

 tion and the survival of the fittest, 



If \ve drop the arbitrary definition that acquired characters can 

 be considered as inherited only if they come true for half a dozen 

 generations after the organism has been restored to the original 

 conditions, the facts will be tremendously against the biologist's 

 point of view. If we drop this arbitrary definition, as I think we 

 should, we are conf ronted by the difficulty of distinguishing, in cer- 

 tain cases, between inheritance and adaptation during life. LeClerc 

 and Leavitt^^ consider that climatic conditions are of tremendous 

 importance in regard to wheat. 



" Too much has been taken for granted regarding the influence of 



heredity in plants. Without detracting from the power which heredity 



may exert in the progeny of seed, the results here produced de show 



that plants are to a very large extent influenced by their environment. 



Seeds grown in Kansas are quite different in chemical composition 



and in physical appearance from the same variety grown in another 



locality having different climatic conditions. That the composition of 



the seed has very little to do with the composition of the crop, especially 



when the seed has been transported to and sown in another locality 



having other climatic conditions, is amply shown by the data given in 



the tables where it is shown, e. g., that the California-grown seed and 



the Kansas-grown seed give seed of practically the same composition 



when grown side by side in Kansas. It is seen that notwithstanding 



the fact that three plots were grown in Kansas, Texas, California, or 



South Dakota, from seed of the same variety possessing widely differ- 



" Le Clerc and Leavitt : Seventh Internat. Congress of Applied Chemistry. 

 Section VII, 136 (1909). 



