230 Theories Treating of Inheritance 



Sedgwick 



This investigator deduces the possibility of the in- 

 heritance of acquired characters from his conception that 

 the pluricellular organism is simply a great syncytium. 



"If the protoplasm of the body is essentially a syncy- 

 tium and the ovum until maturity a part of that 

 syncytium, the separation of the generative products does 

 not differ essentially from the internal gemmation of a 

 protozoan, and the inheritance by the offspring of pecul- 

 iarities first appearing in the parent, though not ex- 

 plained, is rendered less mysterious; for the protoplasm 

 of the whole body being continuous, we must naturally be 

 inclined to think that every change in the molecular con- 

 stitution of any parts of it would naturally be expected 

 to spread in time, through the whole mass." 175 



This conception which recalls somewhat Naegeli's 

 idea of an idioplasmic network, extending its meshes 

 throughout the whole body, though it gives a hint of the 

 possible mechanism of inheritance by means of this proto- 

 plasmic continuity, nevertheless does not give even the 

 most vague and remote notion of the nature of this 

 mechanism. 



Bard 



According to this author the cells participate in onto- 

 genetic development in two ways. The first way is by 

 their specific division or qualitative nuclear division, as 

 in Weismann's theory of preformistic germs. The second 

 rests upon a special action of the germ cells upon the 

 somatic cells, acting indeed at a distance but nevertheless 



175 Adam Sedgwick: The Development of the Cape Species of 

 Peripatus. Quart. Journ. of Microscopical Sc. Vol. XXVI. 1886- 

 P. 206. 



