EEBEDITY OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS— CUENOT. 341 



by preference from among the individuals which had been the most 

 affected, there are an increasing number of young which have both 

 eyes affected, and the anomaly appears in an increasing number 

 of young. 



To show that the reappearance of the specific dystrophia from 

 generation to generation is really due to heredity and not to a 

 passage of the previously formed antibody, Guyer and Smith crossed 

 defective males with normal females (without family relationship 

 with the treated stock). The first generation had eyes invariably 

 without loss (dominance of the normal character) , but the females of 

 this generation (heterozygotes), crossed anew with defective males, 

 produced a certain number of young with degenerated eyes. From 

 the genetic point of view, this can be understood only if it is admitted 

 that the male hereditary patrimony has undergone a specific modi- 

 fication. 



Of course, we can not base much on the experiment of Guyer and 

 Smith until it has been repeated with concordant results by other 

 observers. I will indicate later on, moreover, the criticisms which 

 can be advanced against it. But it seems that the two authors have 

 worked with care and have foreseen and avoided the causes of error. 

 If this experiment is valid, what important consequences, what 

 changes in our manner of thinking ! 



Since specific antibodies can produce specific modifications in the 

 germinal cells, we can not escape the conclusion that there is in the 

 hereditary patrimony a substance which has a certain chemical 

 correspondence with the developed crystalline lens ; the crystallolysin 

 (be it a substance or a property) affects on the one hand the lens 

 in process of formation in the fetus, and on the other hand the 

 germinal cells of the same in such a way that these last will be the 

 origin of young with defective lenses. We can understand if neces- 

 sary that the crystallolysin, like a poison, might modify somewhat 

 the germinal cell, though in a general way, like a tuberculous or 

 syphilitic toxin or a lead poison ; but that the modification should be 

 specific is astounding. There is, then, in the germ a part which is 

 the " representative " of the crystalline lens, for example, a fixed 

 colloid approaching more or less the colloids of the developed lens. 

 And if it is so for the crystalline, it should be so for all the differen- 

 tiated cells of the organism, pigmentary, nervous, fat, muscular, 

 stomachic, pancreatic, renal, etc. We thus return to a particle con- 

 ception of the germinal cells, to chemical determinants, a theory 

 which Delage 8 formulated very briefly by taking up again and modi- 

 fying the more or less analogous ideas of Weismann and of W. Koux. 



8 Delage, La structure du protoplasma et les theories sur 1'hereditS, etc., Reinwald, 

 Paris, 1895, p. 807. 



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