ON THE QUICK GROWING WALNUT 



able period. In the last analysis, people are able 

 to put two and two together and discover that the 

 result is four. And in the course of time even the 

 most illogical biologists were forced to see the 

 elemental truth of the proposition that new char- 

 acters acquired by an individual organism must be 

 transmissible, else there could be no such cumu- 

 lative change as that which results in the trans- 

 formation of a species in new adaptations to its 

 surroundings. 



In other words, if acquired characters are not 

 transmitted, there can be no organic evolution. 



But a good many of the former adherents of 

 this paradoxical view have abandoned their illog- 

 ical position unwillingly, and even now are only 

 willing to admit that such acquired characters are 

 transmissible as are imprinted first on the germ 

 plasm, and not on the body of the parent organism. 



The contention really reduces the entire matter 

 to a question of definition. It is virtually a dis- 

 tinction without a difference, when we reflect that, 

 at all events, in the case of the plants, germ plasm 

 and body plasm are everywhere associated, so that 

 we must suppose that if there is really a distinction 

 between the two, it is a distinction within the sub- 

 stance of the individual cell, as the plant body 

 contains both body plasm and germ plasm. Our 

 earlier studies have shown that we are forced to 



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