i6o NATURAL SCIENCE. Sept., 



ters possible ? ' " Now it is a fact, notorious among biologists, that 

 from the time of Darwin's provisional hypothesis of pangenesis until 

 Weismann reopened the question, people were not asking '• How is 

 transmission of acquired characters possible ? " Practically everyone 

 who wrote with biological knowledge, and everyone who wrote without 

 biological knowledge, assumed that acquired characters were trans- 

 mitted, and troubled very little about the '* how." The question 

 Weismann raised was, not whether such transmission were possible, 

 but whether or no it actually occurred. And whatever may come of 

 Weismann's speculative views, the result of the controversy he raised 

 has been that naturahsts, instead of taking the inheritance of acquired 

 characters for granted, are in two minds as to whether or no they are 

 ever inherited. The majority of supposed cases has been disproved : 

 there is little but the theoretical possibility left. 



This, however, is a small matter, and Mr. Grant Allen deserves 

 so well of the public for his admirable efforts and achievements in the 

 popular presentation of science that we might have passed it by. 

 But his own suggested contribution, offered as a " piece of bare 

 philosophical thinking," is too primitive in its naked' simplicity to 

 avoid the interference of the scientific police. He suggests that the 

 great mystery is not inheritance, but assimilation ; not why John 

 Evans begets little Jack Evans, but why the brown bread and 

 beefsteak John Evans eats becomes turned into the flesh and body of 

 John Evans. Certainly, the mystery of assimilation is great enough; 

 though, perhaps, it is only more complicated, and not, in reality, 

 deeper than the mystery involved in a crystal, growing in a mixed 

 mother-liquid, attracting only particles like its own particles, and 

 building these new particles into a predetermined geometrical 

 structure. The mystery of inheritance is not the mystery of assimi- 

 lation, but something more. An amoeba feeds upon not-amoeba : 

 grows : divides : and there are two amcebae. But a fertilised egg- 

 cell feeds : grows : repeatedly divides, and the ultimate product may 

 contain not a single cell like the original egg cell, but forms a 

 structure like that from which the egg-cell came. Here is a mystery 

 within a mystery ; the "me" feeding upon the "not-me" and growing, 

 not into " me," but into my father. Mr. Grant Allen's apparent 

 simplification of the problem is attained only by ignoring it. 



Diphtheria Anti-Toxin. 



At the recent meeting of the British Medical Association there 

 took place an important discussion upon anti-toxin. It was remarkable 

 how favourable were the reports by different specialists upon the new 

 remedy. Dr. Sydney Martin explained in detail, with the aid of 

 elaborate diagrams, the extent to which the anti-toxin had counter- 

 acted the effect of the diphtheria poison in a large number of cases 



