II.] ASEXUAL MODIFICATION. 71 



roots. Various writers have objected to the continuity 

 of the germ -plasm because of this power of a plant to 

 reconstruct itself from purely vegetative parts. Eiraer, 

 who is Weismann's chief German opponent, speaks 

 of this power of reconstruction in both animals and 

 plants, following division, as follows: "The new com- 

 plete individual produced by this method has the same 

 characters as the animal or plant produced at another 

 time from a germ -cell — a proof that the substance pos- 

 sessing the property of heredity is not confined to the 

 germ -plasm, and that it cannot be something altogether 

 different from other parts of the organism." 



But there is another aspect to this asexual multipli- 

 cation of plants which I do not remember to have seen 

 stated in this connection. It has been said that the 

 asexually multiplied plants may afterwards produce 

 flowers and resume the normal method of reproduction 

 and variation. I now wish to add, what I have already 

 said, that plants may be continuously multiplied asexu- 

 ally and yet the offspring may vary, and the variations 

 may.be transmitted from generation to generation, quite 

 as perfectly as if seed -production intervened. This has 

 been true with certain plants through a long period of 

 time, as with the banana, and every intelligent gardener 

 knows that plants propagated by cuttings often "sport" 

 or vary. Here are cases, then, in which variation does 

 not originate from sexual union, unless Weismann is 

 willing to concede that the result of previous sexual 

 union has remained latent through any number of gene- 

 rations and has been carried to all parts of the plant by 

 a generally diffused germ -plasm; and if this is admitted, 

 then I must again insist that this germ -plasm must be 

 just as amenable to external influences as the soma- 



