1894. SOME NEW BOOKS. 67 



ingenious manner, and at least succeeds in convincing the reader that 

 the shapes of animals are not altogether unprofitable subjects of study. 



The architecture of the geiuinayia, as one learns from Dr. Haacke's 

 descriptions and figures, is of a simple kind. They form no airy 

 structures with arches and beams and colonnades. The gemma; are 

 superimposed in solid masses as our primeval forefathers might have 

 built monuments to their fathers, or altars to their gods. As there 

 are different numbers of gemmce in the successive tiers, they resemble 

 still more closely the solid staircases which we, as children, formed of 

 our wooden bricks. 



These gemma may adhere together closely or loosely. In each 

 generation individuals with gemmaria of which the gemma are closely 

 adherent are very naturally more stable than those whose gemmaria, 

 so to speak, dissolve with every puff of wind. This is Dr. Haacke's 

 interpretation of differences in the strength of individual constitutions. 

 He points out that, in the struggle between individuals, it is not the 

 individual with a claw slightly longer, or with a tooth slightly sharper, 

 that, on the average, survives longer to propagate his species more 

 largely. It is the individual generally better endowed, generally 

 more adapted to resist every blow of fate, to take advantage of good 

 fortune of every kind, that is favoured in Nature's battle. Interpreted 

 into his theory, this means that in each generation those individuals 

 with little adhesion of the gemma in the gemmaria speedily are 

 discomfited ; that, in fact, there is a gradual phylogenetic strengthen- 

 ing of the stability of the gemmaria. 



From this another result ensues. Strengthening of the gemmaria 

 implies a resistance to change of any kind. Just as the stable 

 gemmaria resist external influences that might be to their hurt, so 

 they resist influences that might be to their advantage. Thus, with 

 age each race becomes hardened. It pursues its own line of progress 

 resisting all other influences, and so a race may die out, as many 

 races seem to have died out, because it persists in a definite line of 

 development after that line has ceased to be of advantage to it, and 

 has even become detrimental. 



The plasma, that is to say the gemmaria, all over the body of an 

 animal is not only similar in shape and structure, but is in a condition 

 of organic stability. Hence it follows that any external influence 

 acting on a part of the organism, so as to alter the shape of the 

 gemmaria, will disturb the equilibrium of the whole body. The dis- 

 turbed system gradually settles into a new position of stability, a 

 position in which the new force has been registered. Thus it happens 

 that every change of any part of the organism is reflected upon the 

 plasma of the germ-cells of the organism. Thus, acquired characters 

 are inherited, subject, of course, to the limitation that the impacted 

 force must be sufficiently great, or last through a space of time 

 sufficiently long to counteract the stability of the gemmaria 

 acquired in ages of elimination of the less stable. Thus, for instance, 

 Dr. Haacke scofts at the attempt of anyone in a few generations of 

 mutilations, by docking the tails of even go generations of mice, to 

 prove or disprove the question of the inheritance of acquired 

 characters. When nature has been building up gemmaria that give 

 rise to tails, and hardening these gemmaria for a million generations, 

 it is ridiculous for man with his scalpel and his few score years to 

 hope to interfere. 



It may be possible that, to some readers, a theory so purely 

 theoretical as this theory of Dr. Haacke's may not be attractive. 



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