io8 ARE THE EFFECTS OF USE INHERITED? 



and when these observers guard themselves by 

 such phrases as, " if any conclusion can at present 

 be drawn from those facts," we who have only 

 incomplete reports to guide us may well be 

 excused if we preserve an even more pronounced 

 attitude of caution and reserve. 1 The morbid state 

 of the system may be wholly due to general injury 

 of the germs rather than to specific inheritance. 



Weismann suggests that the morbid condition 

 of the nervous system may be due to some 

 infection such as might arise from microbes, which 

 find a home in the mutilated and disordered 

 nervous system in the parent, and subsequently 

 transmit themselves to the offspring through the 

 reproductive elements, as the infections of various 

 diseases appear to do the muscardine silkworm 



\ The various results need to be fully and impartially recorded, 

 and they should also be well tested and confirmed in proportion as 

 they appear improbable and contrary to general experience. Pro- 

 fessor Romanes has been carrying out the necessary experiments for 

 some time past. 



