Nature oi' Herediiv. 319 



building- or growlli of ihe added characlei-s which consiiuite pro- 

 gressive evolution as evidence of the existence of a pecuUar species 

 of energy, which I term bathmism. This is to be explained as a 

 mode of motion of the molecules of living protoplasm, by which 

 the latter build tissue at particular points, and do not do so at other 



points in bathmism we see the resultant of innumerable 



antecendent influences, which builds an organism constructed for 

 adaptations to the varied and irregularly occurring contingencies 

 which characterise the life of living beings. . . . The preceding 

 statements do not, of course, constitute an explanation (jf the exact 

 manner in which a stimulus which effects, say, the contrac-tion of a 

 nuiscle. effects molecular movements of the nuclei of the reproductive 

 cells. This is a question of organic molecular physics, a science 

 which has made scarcely a beginning. That the transmission of 

 such influence is through nutritive channels. b\ the intermediation 

 ol a nervous structure where one exists. ma\ be suppc)sed. 

 If appears to me that we can more readiK conceive of the trans- 

 mission of a resultant form of energy (jf this kind to the germ- 

 plasma than of material particles or gemmules. Sui-h a iheor} is 

 .supported bv the known cases of the influence of maternal impressi(jns 

 on the growing fcetus. Ooing into greater detail, we mav compare 

 the building of the embr\o to the unfolding of a record or memory, 

 which is stored in the central nervous organism of the jiarent. and 

 impressed in greater or less part on the germ-[jlasma during its con- 

 struction, in the order in which it was stored. This record may be 

 supposed to l)e woven into the texture of every organic cell, and 

 to be destroyed b\' specialisation in m'odified cells in proportion as 

 they are incapable of reproducing anything but themselves. 

 In the process of embryonic growth, one mode of motion would 

 generate its successor in obedience to the molecular structural record 

 first laid down in the ovum and spematozooid, and then combined 

 and recomposed on the union of the two in the oospore, or fertilized 



ovum The somatic cells retain onl\ the record or 



memor\ of their special function. On the other hand, the reproductive 

 cells, which most nearly resemlile the independent unicellular 

 organisms, retain first the impressif.ins received during their ]jrimitive 

 un' cellular ancestral condition : and second, those which they have 

 acquired through the organism of which thev have been and are 

 only a ])art. The medium through which the\ can receive such im- 

 pression is continuous prf)toplasm." 



I have quoted thus at length from Professor Cope's work becau.se 

 I believe that his view^s on the nature of heredity come nearer to 

 the truth than those of any other writer, and the remarks which I 

 have now to make are little more than an extension and amplifica- 

 lion of Cope's argument. There are, in particular, three points upon 

 which 1 do not think suflicnent stress has hitherto been laid: (i) The 

 importance of the cell-nucleus as an apparatus for storing up and 

 giving out stimuli; (2) the possibility of the transference of stimuli 

 between germ cells and somatic cells (or their nuclei) w'ithout any 

 material connection whatever: and (3) the extension of what we 



