i8o DARWINISM TO-DAY. 



heavy antlers could be supported only by those individuals 

 which had received a strengthening of the neck muscles 

 through congenital variation. All others would be killed out. 



"The already discussed principle, of the attainment of 

 selective value for a certain advantage by various means, 

 comes also into play in this connection. In time of drouth it 

 is important to the giraffe only that it can reach a certain 

 height on the trees ; whether this height be reached by the 

 aid of a longer neck or higher shoulders or a specially 

 elongate tongue is indifferent. Through inter-breeding 

 these various advantages may be later united. There is 

 always resulting, as Wallace 10 has said, 'Selection of the 

 capacities or qualities resulting from the infinitely varied 

 combination of variations that are always occurring/ 



''Recently Weismann J1 has presented the principle of 



germinal selection as explaining coadaptive specialisations, 



Plate's dis- so * na t ^ e * s evidently not satisfied with the 



belief in Weis- sufficiency of the three aiding explanations 



mann's principle , . T , . . , . .,,.., 



of germinal already given. . hold this germinal selection, 

 selection. savs pi a t e , "to be a false conception, and there- 



fore do not here refer to it further. It will be discussed in 

 detail later." (This later discussion of Plate's is a detailed 

 and effective destructive criticism of the theory.) 



"Weismann, in his 'Lectures on the Theory of Descent,' 12 

 outlines in detail his theory, proposed several years before, 

 , , that amphimixis (bisexual parentage) is so 

 principle of widely prevalent in both the plant and animal 

 amphimixis, kingdoms, because it serves as the spring of 

 individual variations. A considerable part of the chromo- 

 somes of the egg-cell is removed by the discharge of the 

 polar bodies, and the same results from the reduction divi- 

 sions of the sperm-cells. By this the possibility is created 

 of producing, through the fusion of the germ-cells, very 

 various combinations of the hereditary tendencies and, there- 

 fore, an actual high degree of variability in the offspring. 



