II.] RELATION OF GERM-PLASM TO SOMA-PLASM. 67 



raitting, then, that there is no localized germ -plasm in 

 the vegetable kingdom, and, in many instances, in the 

 animal kingdom; and if the germ -plasm is distributed 

 to the very periphery of the organism, why may it 

 not be directly affected by environment, the same as 

 the soma -plasm is? Or why is the hypothesis any the 

 less objectionable than Darwin's pangenesis, which sup- 

 poses that every organic unit can communicate with 

 the germ ? 



Weismann also supposes, as I have said, that the 

 means by which the germ -plasm is able to reconstruct 

 the soma -plasm in the offspring is through some mod- 



to designate plants which arise from buds (as bud-sports, cutting-made plants, 

 grafts, and the like) in distinction to those which arise from the direct result of 

 sexual union, that is, from seeds. "Male," "female," and like terms, are occa- 

 sionally used to designate paternal and maternal parents. This ascription of 

 sex-relations to the plant itself is held by some botanists to be erroneous, but I 

 consider it to be a perfectly proper use of the terms, and one which is often 

 necessary to perspicuous treatment of the subject. My own convictions upon 

 this subject are set forth in the following note, which appeared in "Science" 

 June 5, 1896. (Professor Charles R. Barnes made a rejoinder to this position ir 

 "Science " for June 26, 1896) : 



ON THE UNTECHNICAL TERMINOLOGY OF THE SEX-RELATION IN PLANTS. 



The modern conception of the sex-relation and the alternation of generations 

 in plants has so changed our point of view respecting the morphologies of various 

 members that an entirely new terminology has recently come into use to express 

 the new-found homologies. At the same time, there is an attempt to restrict or 

 to specialize the use of such age-long words as male and female, sex and the like, 

 when applying them to plants. This part of the new terminology which touches 

 common language is not above criticism, and I wish briefly to advert to it. 



It should be said, in the first place, that the original conceptions of sexuality 

 in plants, from Camerarius down to the middle of this century, were borrowed 

 and adapted very largely from analogy with the animal kingdom. The stamens 

 were considered to be male organs of sex and the pistils to be female organs, the 

 idea of the necessity of a conformed sex-member being evidently borrowed from 

 a knowledge of animal morphology. At the present time, however, our concep- 

 tion of the sex-relation of the higher plants is borrowed from a study of the flow- 

 erless plants, which, with every reason, are believed to represent a more primitive 

 stage of evolution than the flowering plants. The tnie signifieanee of the sex 

 process in plants was first clearly conceived by Hofmeister in 1£4), when he pta^^" fc 

 pounded the hypothesis that certain great groups of plants undergo an altem^p^ ^ 





