262 Theories Treating of Inheritance 



In the process of embryonic growth, one mode of motion 

 would generate its sucessor in obedience to the molecular 

 structural record first laid down in the ovum and sperma- 

 tozooid, and then combined and recomposed on the union 

 of the two in the oospore, or fertilized ovum." 



"Were all cells identical in characters, every one 

 would retain the structural record or memory of its past 

 physical history as do the unicellular organisms. Evolu- 

 tion has however so modified most of the structural 

 units of the organic body that none but the nervous 

 and reproductive cells retain this record in greater or 

 less perfection. The nervous cells have been specialized 

 as the recipients of new impressions, and the excitors of 

 definite corresponding movements in the cells of the re- 

 mainder of the organism. The somatic cells retain only 

 the record or memory of their special function. On 

 the other hand the reproductive cells which most nearly 

 resemble the independent unicellular organisms, retain 

 first the impression received during their primitive 

 unicellular ancestral condition; and second, those which 

 they have acquired through the organism of which they 

 have been and are only a part." 196 



As we shall devote ourselves in the last chapter to 

 the comparison of the ontogenetic phenomenon with the 

 mnemonic, it will suffice here to bring forward, as a 

 contradiction to the same author's assertion reported 

 above in respect to a single dynamic mode in the whole 

 organism, the complete mnemonic somatization of the 

 specialized somatic cells, or nuclear somatization, which 

 this investigator recognized, and also his suggestive sub- 

 stantial equalization of the nerve cells with the repro- 



186 Cope: Ibid. P. 451453- 



