16 GENETICS 



In the light of these preliminary explanations it is 

 plain that the hopeful point of attack in the science of 

 genetics must inevitably be the germplasm which is the 

 source, or point of departure, in the formation of each 

 new individual, rather than the somatoplasm, which 

 represents the end stages of the hereditary processes. 



This has not been the method of study in the past. 

 The resemblances of the visible father and son have 

 usually been traced instead of the character of their 

 unseen germplasms. By following this old method, in- 

 vestigators have often been misled because the visible 

 or apparent is not always the true index of what lies 

 behind it. A gray and a white rabbit, for example, may 

 produce some offspring that are entirely black or 

 two white-flowering sweet peas when crossed may some- 

 times produce purple blossoms. Consequently it is a 

 great fallacy to affirm that always in heredity "like 

 produces like," since the opposite is quite often the 

 case. 



The new heredity, embodied in the science of genetics, 

 attempts to go deeper than the surface appearance 

 of the somatoplasm. It aims to get at the source or ori- 

 gin of organisms, that is, the germplasm which is the 

 only connecting thread between succeeding generations 

 of living forms from the "unbeginning past." It is 

 concerned not so much with somatoplasm, which repre- 

 sents what the germplasm has done in the past, as 

 with the germplasm itself and what it can do in the 

 future. 



