Cope 261 



which are active simultaneously, each in its own w^ay in 

 the most different points of the soma. And just as the 

 resultant of several forces acting upon one point at the 

 same moment can be decomposed again into its former 

 component parts, all of which would still act simulta- 

 neously, so it is conceivable how this particular mode 

 of being of the common form of energy which arose 

 and was stored up in this way in the germ can become 

 decomposed again at the proper time at all the various 

 points of the new organism into the same modes of being 

 as formerly, which had already been its components in 

 the parent organism. 



To mitigate the fault of indefiniteness in his theory 

 this investigator, just like Haeckel, Orr and many others, 

 also compares the ontogeny thus produced by bathmism 

 with the mnemonic phenomenon. And although he has 

 thereby certainly neither removed or even diminished 

 the general vagueness which characterizes his whole 

 theory he succeeds nevertheless in expressing here a 

 remarkable and suggestive idea. 



"We may compare the building of the embryo to 

 the unfolding of a record or memory which is stored 

 in the central nervous system of the parent and impressed 

 in greater or less part on the germ plasm during its 

 construction, in the order in which it was stored. This 

 record may be supposed to be woven into the texture 

 of every organic cell and to be destroyed by specializa- 

 tion in modified cells in proportion as they are incapable 

 of reproducing anything but themselves." 



"In the case of the germ plasma no other specialization 

 exists so that the entire record may be repeated stage 

 after stage, thus producing the succession of type- 

 structures which embryology has made familiar to us. 



