THE STANDPOINT OF BIOLOGISTS. 39 



affection, and when, in consequence, the hair drops 

 off, or marks and irregularities of the nails appear. 

 In these cases the sexual cells may suffer from 

 want of nourishment, or from what we may term 

 a poison, and may produce less vigorous and 

 perhaps diseased or malformed offspring, but they 

 will show no tendency to develop in the offspring 

 that primary local affection which caused ailment 

 in the parent. But, as we shall see in the next 

 chapter, the sexual cells in most cases get off scot- 

 free, and the most dangerous acquired constitu- 

 tional diseases leave no trace of their passage upon 

 the reproductive elements. It is indeed difficult to 

 point to a case, with the notable exception of 

 syphilis, in which acquired constitutional blood dis- 

 orders leave any trace in the organisation of the 

 progeny, and we are indeed fortunate that this is so. 



There seems to be some evidence that we may 

 stunt the growth of a plant or animal by insufficient 

 or unsuitable food, and that all the cells of the body 

 may thereby be reduced in size, the sexual cells 

 among the rest, and that these reduced cells give rise 

 to small progeny in the next generation. Here again 

 the evidence in the case of animals seems rather 

 doubtful, and rests on a few statements, such as that 

 of De Quatrefages, that horses taken from Normandy 

 to the hilly and less fertile country in Brittany become 

 distinctly smaller in the course of three generations. 



