1 



402 Weismamis Theories- 



the hive- bee, and from the ^^<g of this insect, it has recently 

 been ascertained, a second polar body is extruded.^ There- 

 fore, according to Professor Weismann, there cannot be 

 substance enough for its development. But it is developed 

 notwithstanding. Therefore fertilisation must be something 

 more than a mere addition of like to like, and the male 

 influence must have sonae difference in kind or nature from 

 the female. This is the view now strongly held by that most 

 indefatigable and rising young naturalist. Professor Geddes, 

 F.R.S.E., of Dundee. He holds, and has quite lately brought 

 forward a mass of evidence in support of his contention, 

 that in every male element there is an essential activity 

 compared with w^hich the female is essentially passive and 

 inert. It would be foreign to the scope of this article to 

 pursue the details of this contention, but we note with 

 exceeding interest that here again the most recent scientific 

 advance harmonises with the views put forward so many 

 centuries ago by Aristotle. The modes of expression are, of 

 course, different. Professor Geddes employs terms familiar 

 in the most recent physiological teaching,^ but w^hen we 

 come to analyse the ultimate signification of his terms, we 

 find that, deeply considered, they are really reducible to the 

 conception of the ancient sage of Macedonia. 



But Professor Weismann's views are to be refuted by 

 following out the consequences of his doctrine in another 

 direction, and contrasting them with facts. He is an en- 

 thusiastic Darwinian, and ascribes all the adaptations met 

 with in organic nature and all new species to that agency. 

 As, however, he denies that any acquhed character can be 

 inherited, he derives everything from accidental variations 

 in the disposition of the germ-plasm, by which an enormously 



1 By Blochman : see his paper on the polar bodies of the drone's ^%g, 

 Morphol. Jahrbuch, vol. xv. part i. pp. 85-96. 



2 He regards it as a difiference of metabolism, the male being pre- 

 dominantly Katabolic, and the female Anabolic. 



