NEPHELOCOCCYGIA 73 



our knowledge of the size of the molecule of albuminous matter 

 renders the existence of thousands of individual molecular 

 determinants in the minuter portions of the nucleus a matter 

 of sheer impossibility : they could not be packed in the space. 

 If I remember aright it was Herbert Spencer who pointed 

 out that in one feather of the peacock's tail there are 480,000 

 regions or parts capable of independent variation, and that 

 therefore, so Weismannism demands, in each of the many micro- 

 scopic "ids" or chromomeres in the nuclear chromatin of 

 the peahen's ovum there must be 480,000 determinants for a 

 tail feather alone. How many for the rest of the body passes 

 computation ! 



It is this faulty and untenable morphous or morphological 

 concept of unit-properties and hereditary entities that makes 

 it as difficult for Professor Bateson to picture how new accretions 

 (whereby he images new discrete determinants) can make their 

 appearance in the germ cell, as it was for the late King George 

 of glorious memory and muddled to imagine how the apple 

 got into the dumpling. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF LIVING MATTER 



Suppose now we start from known facts and known pheno- 

 mena, and endeavour upon these to build up our idea of the 

 structure and nature of the germ cell, and so of organic basis 

 of heredity, variation, and evolution. 



What, in the first place, do we know of the constitution of 

 living matter ? Will this help us ? I think it will. We know 

 that whatever form of life we investigate, be it in animal or 

 plant, mammoth or microbe, whatever form we analyse, and 

 whatever tissue of that form we analyse, leaving out of account 

 water and certain common vehicular salts to which no specific 

 vital functions can be attributed, just one order of highly 

 complex organic compounds is common to and to be isolated 

 from all forms of living beings, and these are the proteins. This 

 characteristic universal presence of these highly complex organic 

 compounds in itself indicates that they are intimately associ- 

 ated with vital functions. It is true that when we isolate 

 them chemically they are inert, in other words in the living 



