98 Kansas Academy of Science. 



hastened in its swift current to auxiliary parts of the body for help in 

 the shape of nourishment and oxygen. Some of these outshoots of 

 chromatin may find developing germ cells and modify to a slight de- 

 gree the inheritance of the next and succeeding generations. This would 

 be no more wonderful than the changes produced in distant parts of an 

 organism by antibodies, hormones and chalones. 



It is fortunate for each species of plant and animal that the changes 

 in inheritance come slowly, keeping pace with the changes in the average 

 environment, otherwise the plant or animal might not survive in its 

 struggle for existence. In the geologic history of the earth many forms 

 have failed to keep pace with their environment, or have advanced too 

 rapidly, and in consequence have perished. Thousands of plants and 

 animals that varied in the wrong direction, or too rapidly, or too slowly, 

 were destroyed in the different periods of the earth's history, but other 

 thousands of their relatives varied with their environments and there- 

 fore survived to continue earth's faunas and floras. 



While the hormones (stimulators), chalones (retarders) and anti- 

 bodies (immunizers) may not be alive, they originate in living cells and 

 act on living cells, and hence owe their efficiency in guiding the develop- 

 ment of plants and animals to protoplasm energized through life. It 

 is life that is the variable and produces variations in organisms. 



Darwin himself fully understood the limitations of his theory of 

 natural and artificial selection. He knew that selection alone could not 

 originate a part of a plant or animal or even modify it. Selection can 

 merely sit in judgment on the work of conscious use or disuse, and 

 reject the individual when it is harmful to the species, or accept the 

 individual when it is helpful. The effects alone of conscious use and 

 disuse of cells, tissues and organs can be inherited. Each tissue and 

 organ had its beginning so long ago in time, and so far down in the plant 

 or animal kingdom, that the cells were at first but slightly modified by 

 life, and millions of years were required to bring the tissue or organ 

 to perfection. Once completed, other millions of years are needed to lose 

 the part, so slowly are species-instincts changed by life through disuse. 



A Probable Case of Superfetation in the Cow. 



Maky T. Harman. 



Contribution from the Zoological Laboratory of the Kansas State Agricultural College, 



No. 21 (abstract). 



A cow which was mated on December 22, 1916, gave birth to a calf 

 on September 27, 1917. The calf was a normally developed female 

 slightly above the average in size. On October 1 this cow gave birth to an- 

 other calf, which, according to the decision of the veterinarian, was a 

 little more than a four months' fetus. This second calf was inclosed 

 in the animon, and the placenta was in good condition. Although the 

 calf was dead when born, the death had evidently occurred only a short 

 time previously, as there was no indication of decay. 



