E inter on Growth and Inheritance 42 1 



The second he affirms to be a similarly superfluous quantity 

 of ancestral germ-plasm. We learn from him that, as gene- 

 ration succeeds to generation, an ever-increasing competition 

 takes place between such ancestral germ-plasms, the most 

 ^ancient becoming gradually ' crowded out.' Thus we may 

 imagine that, with the extrusion of a second polar body 

 to-day, there may be excluded the germ-plasm of a contem- 

 porary of Boadicea, or of one who fought at Hastings or 

 Agincourt, Worcester, or Waterloo, as the case may be. We 

 may imagine this and a great deal more ; but when we ask 

 for any evidence on which such hypothesis may be seen to 

 securely repose, we ask what we most certainly do not get. 

 There is, no doubt, a method in the Professor's madness, but 

 it is madness all the same. 



It is time for us now to turn from the dreamer of Freiburg 

 to consider the teaching of the visionary of Tubingen, whose 

 work it is the purpose of this essay to review. It has been 

 necessary to give some account here of Weismann's views, 

 because without a knowledge of them we could not appre- 

 ciate, or even really understand, the drift and meaning of 

 Professor Elmer's book. Its avowed purpose is to review 

 the newest evolutionary theories, and especially to deal 

 with the laws of growth and the question whether or not 

 any acquired characters can, under any circumstances, be 

 inherited. 



But before considering the words of Professor Eimer him- 

 self, we desire to call attention to some noteworthy remarks 

 of his translator on the same subject. 



According to Weismann, every character possessed by 

 every animal is due to the preservation in the struggle for 

 life of minute accidental variations in the molecular struc- 

 ture of germ-plasm, which alone has adapted every being to 

 its environment. But Mr. Cunningham is prepared to 

 maintain not only that many structural features call be 



