III.] IS THE GERM-PLASM CONTINUOUS? 103 



been made to this statement is that very many plants are 

 propagated asexually by horticulturists, and that all 

 plants can probably be so propagated if there were any 

 occasion for the effort. This answer is true; but the 

 philosophical answer is that every phyton is an auton- 

 omy, and that the mere accident of its growing on the 

 phiut, in the soil, or in a bottle of water, is whollj- aside 

 from the point, for wherever it grows it lives at first a 

 sexless life, it has an individuality, competes with its 

 fellows, varies to suit its needs, and is capable, finally, 

 of developing sex. 



Another fundamental tenet of Weismannism is the 

 continuity of the germ -plasm, the passing down from 

 generation to generation of a part or direct offspring of 

 the original germ -plasm. Now, if it has any continuity 

 in plants, this ancestral germ -plasm must be inextri- 

 cably diffused in the soma -plasm, as I have said, for 

 every part or phyton of these plants, even to the roots 

 and parts of the leaves, is able to produce sexual parts 

 or germ -plasm. Every plant, too, is wholly sexless or 

 somatic in the early part of its existence (see page 73), 

 and whatever germ -plasm it may have when it begins to 

 develop germ -cells must come either from the soma- 

 plasm itself or from latent germ -plasm, which is inti- 

 mately associated with the soma -plasm. And if this 

 germ -plasm is inextinguishably associated with every 

 cell of the plant bod3% why may it not receive and trans- 

 mit all incident impressions upon the plant ? Why 

 should acquired characters impress themselves upon the 

 soma-plasm and not upon the germ-plasm, when this 

 latter element is contained in the very nuclei, as Weis- 

 mann admits, of somatic cells ? If the theory of the 

 continuity of the germ -plasm is true for plants, then 



