GAGER: CRYPTOMERIC INHERITANCE IN ONAGRA 465 
plumule developed. This was due either to their 
separating from the normal characters during nu- 
clear divisions, or to the normal characters becoming 
inactive. 
6. As a result of the previous exposure to radium rays. 
Suggestions I and 3 (1) above imply, of course, that the 
anomalous Onagra shoot was the expression of merely a somatic 
change in the plant body, not involving the germ cells at all, and 
that this is why the atypical characters did not reappear in the 
generation resulting froma cross between the unlike shoots; or, 
in other words, that the characters of the narrow-leaved shoot 
were not represented in the sperm cells of its pollen, and that these 
gametes were of hereditary content identical with those of the 
broad-leaved shoot. It is difficult, however, to conceive that such 
a condition could be realized, since the sperm cells, as truly as all 
the other cells of the narrow-leaved shoot, are the lineal descend- 
ants of the somatic cells which by the supposition were held to. 
have sported. If, however, the characters of the narrow-leaved 
shoot were due merely to the fact that certain factors that were 
active in the broad-leaved shoot became inactive in the cell, or 
group of cells, that give rise to the narrow-leaved shoot, then it is 
thinkable that these factors became active again in the sperm 
cells and that thus the original condition was restored. But this 
does not seem very probable. 
A much more probable solution than this emerges from the 
hypothesis of intracellular pangenesis*: namely, that the change 
resulting in the narrow-leaved shoot involved only the cytoplasm 
of the somatic or germ cells concerned, while their nuclei continued 
to carry, in the inactive state, the original hereditary deposit of 
the immediate ancestry. Whether the vehicle of this inheritance 
is conceived of as granular pangens, or as biogens of a definite kind, 
or as droplets of some enzyme or other chemical substance, or as 
a relationship merely, between certain bodies, or as any other kind 
of a ‘‘gene,” does not affect the hypothesis of a change involving 
cytoplasm only. In this way an unaltered nuclear germ track 
might ramify through the plant, resulting in gametes perfectly 
typical so far as the nucleus is concerned. It is quite probable 
* de Vries!6, 197-207. 
