THE STANDPOINT OF BIOLOGISTS. 37 



It must be admitted that this evidence is pretty 

 strong, and we need not wonder that it has produced 

 such widespread conviction, although it has been so 

 lately taken up by the thinking public. 



The Reproductive and the Body Cells. 



The body of a plant or animal is composed of 

 small living bodies, most of them of microscopic size, 

 called cells. These lead, to a certain extent, indivi- 

 dual lives, and have individual characters, but they 

 are built, as it were, together, like the bricks and 

 stones of a house, to form the body. The cells are, 

 all of them, nourished by the blood and lymph, and 

 some are connected together by strands of connecting 

 matter termed nerves. All the cells of the body are 

 descendants from a single fertilised egg, which has 

 resulted from the fusion of a paternal and maternal 

 sexual cell. Among the cells of the body, and 

 situated in special organs, are the sexual cells, like- 

 wise nourished by blood, but not connected by nerves 

 with other parts of the body. 



Reproductive Cells unaffected by Local Changes in the 

 Body Cells. 



Now there is no reason to suppose that these 

 sexual cells residing in the bodies of the parent will 



