Mode of Inheritance of Adcq^tive Characters. 75 



is a storehouse of ferments which set up activities in the 

 cytoplasm, were shown to be the right one, we should have, 

 not only an explanation of the specification of nuclei and 

 limitation of development as quoted above, but a possible 

 explanation of how the beautiful adjustments, which animals 

 and plants undergo in relation to their surroundings, could 

 be indirectly handed on in inheritance, and this without 

 entailing the destruction of individuals to the extent that 

 is required by the ordinary interpretation of natural selec- 

 tion. That natural selection has far-reaching powers in all 

 these adjustments has to be admitted without doubt, and 

 the hypothesis advanced in this paper is but a carrying of 

 natural selection into the tissue cells as individuals, which 

 work in a kind of symbiosis in their complex relations to 

 one another. If this be true, there is no reason to doubt 

 that, by the doubling of inheritance in the union of gametes, 

 the war of elimination may be carried into the far recesses 

 of the cell, and that " a germinal election and elimination 

 in adaptation to the environment " (9) may be a source of 

 variation in the germ cells. 



Eeferences. 



1. Crampton, Cecil B., "Anabolism and Specialisation," Proc. 



Roy. Phys. Soc. Edin., March 1904. 



2. Beaed, J., " Morphological Continuity of Germ Cells." 



3. Wilson, "The Cell in Development and Inheritance," 



p. 323. 



4. Pfeffer, Ewart, " Physiology of Plants," English transla- 



tion, vol. i. pp. 375, 501. 



5. Bateson, "President's Address to British Association, 1904." 



6. Bateson, " Materials for the Study of Variation." 



7. Beard, J., " Heredity and the Cause of Variation." 



8. Metchnikoff, "Nature of Man," p. 49. 



9. Beard, J., " Heredity and the Cause of Variation." 



