Multicellular Bodies 367 



special function; and produce successors at the decline of its 

 vitality, which were changed enough to have affinity with the 

 germ from which they arose, and to be acceptable for con- 

 jugation with it. In fact many cells are observed to coalesce 

 in such a way as to suggest this ; although their union has 

 been often ascribed to mere functions of nourishment, or 

 even to destructive competition. It may well be that a gen- 

 eral system prevails that final singled cells and polar bodies, 

 instead of being wasted, are returned to their center of 

 origin selected by affinity of a prime germplasm cell, of a 

 somatic center leading to the germ ; and then by simple con- 

 jugation, their fulfillment of function, together with a record 

 of all newly acquired function, is made due part of the 

 germplasm and of its heredity. 



The germ, obedient to cause, records and transmits such 

 somatic things as it makes or causes. It will not transmit 

 a character caused to the somatic body externally. An ampu- 

 tation is not transmitted because it does not affect the germ- 

 plasm, or, if it does, may be surmised to rather provoke an 

 effort at repair, in a limited local healing of a wound. But 

 let a difference of length of a limb or such structure arise in 

 the germ or life-plasm, or even in its structure centers, and 

 let this be repeated a few times, in a selection of such self- 

 caused cases, and let it next be presented in both sexes, and 

 it will, and visibly does, become transmitted and soon fixed. 

 Examples abound of the heritability of an abnormal number 

 or size of fingers in man, as well as of the non-heredity of 

 surgical effects. A character thus acquired may be new, an 

 addition to the old; or it may be a mere change of an old 

 character, as when an animal acquires a length of limb con- 



