14 MINUTES. [Feb. 5, 



tinuity of the germ plasm. To be sure it is known that the germ 

 plasm, the chromatin, is not an eternally unchangeable substance, 

 as Weismann at first postulated. But the chromatin persists from 

 generation to generation ; the continuity of the germ plasm is what 

 to-day is being termed the continuity of the chromosomes, and 

 these continue from generation to generation, maintaining their 

 individuality, just as much as a particular cell of one generation 

 may be said to be represented by a particular cell of another. 



Only some half dozen years ago, in the course of the conflict over 

 the germ-plasm theory of Weismann, no workers upheld the occur- 

 rence of the reduction division except the school at Freiburg and 

 one or two others. There even appeared a paper, presuming to be 

 decisive, entitled '' The Facts of Chromosome Reduction versus 

 the Postulates of Weismann" (J. E. S. Moore, 1897). Since that 

 time there has been much new research and by the comparative 

 method, perhaps the safest of all methods, and the mass of evidence 

 is now strongly corroborative of Weismann's two cardinal postu- 

 lates. So to-day Weismann can point to the actual confirmation 

 of the fundamental portion of his germ-plasm theory. 



dialed Meeting, February 5, 1904. 

 President Smith in the Chair. 



The following papers were read: 



''The Babylonian and Hebrew Accounts of the Creation, 

 in the Light of Recent Criticism, ' ' by Prof. Morris Jastrow, 

 Jr. 



''The Miocene Diabase of the Santa Cruz Mountains in 

 San Mateo County, California, ' ' by H. L. Haehl and Ralph 

 Arnold, communicated bv Prof. J. C. Branner. 



