Gait on; DeVries; Weismann 283 



ditional rejection of the inheritance of acquired char- 

 acters. Nevertheless he did not immediately venture to 

 go so far but continued to admit as a sort of concession 

 that in the adult organism a gemmule might occasionally 

 escape from the somatic cell, which had produced it and 

 was also its customary abode, even though this cell had 

 been only shortly before acquired in consequence of a new 

 functional adaptation ; then this gemmule might be taken 

 up by the reproductive organs and become likewise a part 

 of the stirp and the acquired character which had ap- 

 peared in the somatic cells might thus be inherited. 213 



In the case of DeVries we should remark that he 

 assumes that the germinal substance, that is the sum total 

 of the pangens, is present equally in all nuclei only be- 

 cause he, as we have also seen in the case of Driesch, took 

 it for granted that nuclear divisions are qualitatively 

 equal. If then a nucleus of a somatic cell acquired new 

 pangens, as a consequence of a new local functional 

 adaptation, then they would have to remain in the place 

 where they arose and could not enter the reproductive 

 cells also. And so much the more since he also asserts 

 that the substance which will later actually form the 

 sexual cells separate itself from the soma immediately, at 

 the commencement of development, and passes along cer- 

 tain "Keimbahnen," which may be recognized, chiefly 

 because upon them the greater part of the pangens remain 

 inactive. 214 



In respect to Weismann we remark once again that in 

 consequence of a more rigorous logical elaboration of the 

 doctrine of preformistic germs, which has convinced him 



213 Galton : A Theory of Heredity. Journ. of the Anthropo- 

 logical Institute. January 1876. P. 342 343. 



21 *De Vries: Intracellulare Pangenesis. P. 188189. 



