BIOPHORIC INTERACTION 95 



cell, i.e. to each cell nucleus, again the static conception cannot 

 be permissible. We must realize that these two orders of bio- 

 phores, existing in each cell of the body and activating each 

 cell, are throughout life undergoing growth, building up side- 

 chains and radicles, and that there is a constant recurrence of 

 processes of association and discharge from each molecule out 

 of and into the nuclear sap. But if this is the case and the two 

 orders of active living molecules lie side by side in the fluid 

 medium of the nucleus, it is impossible to imagine, according 

 to the current Mendelian doctrine, that the two do not interact 

 one upon the other, that the two orders of side-chain substances 

 and dissociation products keep severely apart. We may safely 

 say that there must be interaction : that where tissue cells are 

 undergoing active growth and metabolism and radicles and 

 groups of radicles built up by biophores of the one order become 

 dissociated from those biophores, if they are of an order common 

 to both paternal and maternal biophores, they may be employed 

 indifferently in the building up and growth of biophores of both 

 orders ; if of an order peculiar to, say, the paternal biophores, 

 may under certain conditions be attracted to and built into 

 the growing maternal biophores. We can imagine environ- 

 mental conditions favouring the predominant growth of just 

 the one group of biophores so that the cells of some one tissue 

 take on the characters of the cells in the one parent, or, more 

 easily, in actively working tissue-cells, such an interchange and 

 selection of allelomorphic radicles that eventually one common 

 type of modified biophoric molecule may govern the cell (Fig. 12). 

 And at a slower rate due to their more latent state, this same 

 interchange, we must predicate, is capable of occurring in the 

 biophores of the germ cells, so that eventually a succession of 

 heterozygous generations will give rise to forms without the 

 pure dominant gross characteristics, but showing an approxima- 

 tion to intermediate properties ; 1 or, again, eventually, the inter- 

 change of radicles may be such that the various dominant radicles 

 belonging to both orders of biophores be attracted to, built into 

 the growing molecules, and reproduced by the biophores derived 

 from the one parent whereas the biophores of the other origin in 



1 As in Correns's observations upon the hybridization of the two strains of 

 Mirabilis jalapa, alba and rosea, in which the heterozygotes of the F. genera- 

 tions are not of strong ^dominant rose colour but of a paler dilute pink. 



