30 Discontinuity from body-plasm the 



and the rest of the Neo-Darwinians denies. 

 And this denial it is that entitles us to say 

 that d'iscontinuity, or isolation from the body- 

 plasm, is the essential feature of Weismann's 

 germ-plasm. This germ-plasm persists indeed 

 continuously ; but it persists, so to say, under- 

 ground, screened like the sacred queen-bee^ 

 from all the functioning with the external 

 world which the offsets it periodically throws 

 out discharge. Nevertheless it alone — not 

 intercourse with the environment — is sup- 

 posed to determine their structure. Can the 

 manifold adaptations such structures display 

 and the endlessly diversified series of them — 

 continuously advancing in complexity of 

 adaptation — which the evolution of life as a 

 whole displays, can all these, we ask again, 

 be explained from such a standpoint? 



1 An illustration used by Dr Francis Darwin in his Presidential 

 Address to the Brit. Assoc. 1908. 



