1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



537 



that is yet unborn, jnst as a perfect plant may 

 be found and seen Willi the naked eye in the 

 seed of tht^ morning-glory before it is fully ma- 

 tured and hardened. These are his words: 

 "Ovarian eggs may be found in animals before 

 they have reached maturity; before they have 

 completed their physical growth— nay, ovarian 

 eggs have even been observed in the embryo 

 before birth." 



It will be necessary, then, to look beyond 

 what is known as the act of generation for 

 wliatever inherited tendencies are to come from 

 the mother. To quote again from our illus- 

 trious scientist, " Successive generations do not 

 begin with the birth of new individuals, but 

 with the formation of the egg from which these 

 individuals proceed. We must look, then, upon 

 the egg as the starting-point of the complicated 

 structure of the adult being. It is, as it were, 

 a sieve through which the qualities transmitted 

 by parents to their oflfspring are sifted." What- 

 ever peculiarity there may be in the new being 

 has its foundation in the egg. Within these 

 narrow limits are circumscribed all the condi- 

 tions of change. 



"The egg arises in the maternal organism 

 without the co-operation of the other sex." 



Dr. M. says, "The same germ (egg) planted 

 in the womb of a red mother might have pro- 

 duced a red calf." Of course, this is a fallacy; 

 for germs can not be " planted " in this way; 

 but if they could, the red mother would not be 

 able to influence the color of the calf in the 

 least. It had already received from a white 

 mother all the maternal bias as to color it could 

 ever receive, when the germ was formed in the 

 egg. It might be affected in its characteristics, 

 or that which comes from without, by its red 

 mother; but the inherited tendencies, or that 

 which comes from within, had been unaltera- 

 bly fixed by a white mother. Of course, these 

 might be modified by the act of generation, or 

 the union of the male sperm with the female 

 cell, as I shall have occasion to show further on. 



To quote again from Dr. Miller: "So it 

 seems pretty clear that the calf received in- 

 herited traits by means of the food (mark this) 

 it received before the time it came forth as a 

 perfect calf." Clear to whom ? It seems pret- 

 ty clear to me that it did not do any thing of 

 the kind, as is no doubt apparent from what I 

 have said above. Then Dr. M. changes his il- 

 lustration, and says of a hen's egg, " When the 

 egg was laid, if I am not mistaken, the germ 

 was there with no characteristics except those 

 received from the sire." Doctor, I am very 

 much inclined to think you are seriously "mis- 

 taken," or, to speak more correctly, you have 

 made a serious mistake, and founded your en- 

 tire argument on a false basis. What about the 

 egg of a queen that never "knew a male" 

 bee? What kind of "characteristics," inherit- 

 ed tendencies, are there in that egg, and where 

 did they come from ? 



Hear Agassiz again: "lean not dwell too 

 emphatically upon the fact that th<! eggs are 

 produced, and grow without any agency of the 

 male animal." Again, Dr. M. engages in the 

 transfer business, and thinks of this germ as 

 being transferred to a "speckled hen," and says 

 in that case it might have produced a speckled 

 chicken. I can understand how he reached this 

 conclusion, for he says, in the next, sentence, 

 " If I am correct in this, then the traits of the 

 mother were received by the germ during the 

 time of incubation through the nourishment 

 contained in the egg." 



The truth of the matter would seem to be 

 that neither calf nor chicken received any "in- 

 herited traits "from the "food it consumed." 

 Unless I misunderstand all the facts connected 

 with the law of inheritance, traits are not trans- 

 mitted in that way. You might just as well 

 say that a potato-germ receives traits from the 

 starch, etc., stored up in the potato. But how 

 is it when you cut the germ out and plant it 

 alone in the soil '? Do the traits of inheritance 

 then come from the soil? If so, how would it 

 be if the germ were cut in four parts, as Terry 

 says it may be, and each part were planted in a 

 different kind of soil? Should we have four 

 different kinds of potatoes? I think not. The 

 truth is, the formative power is in the germ the 

 moment it forms in the egg of the female or the 

 sperm of the male; and if the animal is the 

 product of the union of two such cells,sperm and 

 germ, as most animals are, then whatever in- 

 herited tendencies as to physical organism, such 

 as color, etc, the new-born animal may receive 

 from mother or father were latent in these 

 germs the moment they were formed, and no 

 after-influence of nourishment will make one 

 hair or feather white or black. The food or 

 nutriment does not mold the organism, but the 

 latent inherent polarity of the organism assim- 

 ilates, molds, and directs the nutriment. Spen- 

 cer says the physiological units mold the nutri- 

 ment into their own type. I would say the psy- 

 chological formative power takes up the nutri- 

 ment and gives it form after the type of the in- 

 dividuals from which the cells originated. 



Spencer puts it this way": " The form of each 

 species of organism is determined by a pecul- 

 iarity in the constitution of its units." "The 

 living particles composing one of these frag- 

 ments have an innate tendency to arrange 

 themselves into the shape of the organism to 

 which they belong." "Organic polarity "is 

 the name he gives to this power. He then goes 

 on to show that the power does not rest in what 

 he calls the " chemical ^mits ;'" neither can it 

 restinwhathe calls the morpholoijical units, 

 namely, the cells; but we must conceive it as 

 possessed by certain intermediate units which 

 he terms ''physiological.'" Why not cut the 

 Gordian knot by calling this a psychological 

 unit, or somewhat as I have above? 

 It seems to me an incontrovertible fact that 



