468 GAGER: CRYPTOMERIC INHERITANCE IN ONAGRA 
twenty years and after the germinating power of the seeds had 
been lost. According to Albo, the diastatic power is gradually 
lost, and it is not at all improbable that the decomposition prod- 
ucts, resulting from the breaking down of some enzyme (or other 
substance, for that matter), may alter the hereditary content of 
the nucleus, in a manner similar to that effected by MacDougal’ 
by injecting dilute solutions of various substances. This would 
offer a simple explanation of de Vries’s observation, above referred 
to, that older seeds give a larger percentage of mutation than 
fresh ones. The accumulation of these disintegration products in 
the nucleus might inhibit or retard the action of certain enzymes 
involved in growth and development. Moore" has already sug- 
gested that our methods have heretofore been inadequate in taking 
account of only the end products of reactions. On the other 
hand, it is possible that new enzymes may develop and become 
the active agents in the alteration of the nucleoplasm. 
In discussing the manner of origin of an OQ. rubricalyx mutant 
from an O. rubrinervis germ cell, Gates® (loc. cit. 204) dismissed 
de Vries’s conception of pangens as ‘‘too formal an assumption 
to be accorded the dignity of an explanation,” yet later on (ibid. 
p- 209) he speaks of “a fundamental change in the germ-plasm,”’ 
without suggesting how we are to picture this ‘‘fundamental 
change.” The rejected theory of de Vries is that of a fundamental 
change, only the fundament involved is clearly conceived and 
named by its author. It is difficult to understand how pangens 
are more “formal” than molecules, and it does not seem to the 
writer that the “formality” of the hypothesis is a priori a valid 
reason for rejecting it. It is merely a question of, first, does it 
agree with known facts, and, second, is there any actual evidence 
that such bodies as pangens really exist? The recent work of 
Strasburger® seems to indicate that there is, and the facts of 
development and heredity are such as would follow on the basis 
of pangenesis. 
I do not wish to appear as arguing in favor of intracellular 
pangenesis as an expression of ascertained truth. On the contrary, 
I am rather inclined to think that it will have to be either rejected 
or profoundly modified when the truth is known, if it shall ever 
be known; but rejected, not because it is formal, but for lack of 
agreement with observed facts. 
