THE SHASTA DAISY 319 



tial details, sometimes even with the mere jug- 

 gling of words, rather than with essentials. 



As to the broad final analysis of the subject 

 in its remoter bearings, all biologists are agreed. 



There is no student of the subject speaking 

 with any authority to-day, who doubts that all 

 animal and vegetable forms have been produced 

 through evolution, and it requires but the slight- 

 est consideration of the subject to make it clear 

 that Herbert Spencer was right when he said 

 that no one can be an evolutionist who does not 

 believe that new traits somewhere and somehow 

 acquired can be transmitted. 



Otherwise there could be no change whatever 

 in any organism from generation to generation 

 or from age to age : in a word, there would be no 

 evolution. 



The point in dispute, then, is not whether any 

 trait and modification of structure, due to the 

 influence of environment, is transmissible, but 

 only as to whether environmental influences that 

 affect the body only and not the germ plasm of 

 the individual are transmissible. But when we 

 reflect that the germ plasm is part and parcel 

 of the organism, it seems fairly clear that this 

 is a distinction without a real difference. 



As Professor Coulter has recently said, it is 

 largely a matter of definition. 



