146 A Homogeneous Germ Substance Inadmissible 



different characters of the organism, is quite similar to 

 that of Galton. It is summed up in the following passages 

 from his book: "Many species of plants," writes he, 

 "have the power of producing definite chemical com- 

 pounds : among the most important of these are the red 

 and blue coloring substances of flowers : also the various 

 tannic acids, the alkaloids, the etherial oils, and numer- 

 ous other products. A small number only of these com- 

 pounds are limited to a single species of plants : a large 

 number are present in two or more species, systematically 

 far removed from one another. There is no reason to 

 believe that there is a different mode of production of the 

 same compound in each particular case : on the contrary 

 one would naturally expect the same compound, in what- 

 ever place one meets it, to be produced always by the 

 same chemical mechanism/' 



"Similarly we must admit the possibility of a break- 

 ing down of the morphologic signs of species. Morphol- 

 ogy is clearly not yet far enough advanced to permit of 

 such an analysis in each particular case. But the same 

 coarse or fine notching at the leaf margins are repeated 

 in numerous species and the customary terminology in- 

 forms us in advance that all forms of leaf patterns are 

 composed of a relatively small number of more simple 

 characters." 



"This shows that the character of each individual 

 species is made up of numerous hereditary peculiarities of 

 which the most part are present also in an almost infinite 

 number of other species. * * * According to this 

 view, we would regard each species as an extremely com- 

 plicated figure, and the organic world in its entirety as the 

 result of innumerable different permutations and com- 

 binations of a relatively small number of factors." 



