THE METHOD 93 



parts are added by inheritance, to future offspring, 

 how immensely the organism, in time, will become 

 changed in its morphology from what it was in its 

 ancestors. For the law of correlation is that, when one 

 part of the body is changed, other parts are also altered, 

 to maintain the equilibrium of the whole. Of course, 

 not all the changes that occur are useful, and if not, 

 are not likely to be hereditary. 



If they are injurious they decrease the chances for 

 survival of the organism. Immense numbers born, 

 never arrive at maturity, and therefore are not per- 

 petuated. But from all the facts so far discovered, 

 there is little doubt, that in the long ages, that organ- 

 isms have lived, the immense number of varieties, and 

 species, have come about by reason of slow and minute 

 changes, on which natural selection in the survival of 

 the fittest, has operated, or by so sudden a change of 

 all the parts in one generation, as to form a new spe- 

 cies. As said by De Vries, "Eventually all the 

 acquired characters, being transmitted together, would 

 appear to us, as if they had been simultaneously de- 

 veloped." It seems, that when minute variations are 

 of sufficient importance to induce correlation of other 

 parts, the germ cells must take notice, as it were, of 

 so significant a change, and hand it down to the next 

 offspring. But the eye of man -would not likely notice 

 the changes, until they had accumulated sufficiently, 

 to suddenly produce so noticeable a new form, as to 

 be recognized, as a new species. Reversions, as no- 

 ticed further on in Mendelism, may prove that many 

 characters are carried in the recessive biophers, for 

 several generations, without showing in the interme- 

 diate forms, but then suddenly appear. May not 

 accumulations of characters be thus carried and all 



