212 WALTEE KIDD, M.D., P.Z.S., ON 



variations. Weismaun will admit no influence whatever. 

 Much has been written by him and his opponent, Romanes, 

 upon the knotty point of the difference between uni-cellular 

 and multi-cellular organisms in this respect, and one cannot 

 but see that Romanes has much the best of it at all points 

 in his " Examination of Weismannism." 



2G But whether or not Weismann be allowed to call uni- 

 cellular organisms "immortal," and multi-cellular organisms 

 "mortal" for the sake of providing bases for his complex 

 superstructure of theories on Heredity, or whether or not the 

 criticisms of Romanes have pulled down this basis as well as 

 others the importance here of the question is only acade- 

 mical. Even for the sake of a great theory in distress our 

 uni-cellular or minute masses of undifferentiated bioplasm 

 can never be brought within the range of amphigony. 

 Accordingly the main, or even paramount factor in the 

 production of variations will not serve in the variations 

 required by the hypothesis in these tiny dots of matter, in 

 earliest geological times. The moving force, which is to 

 move upAvards in the scale of organized life these micro- 

 scopic structureless beings, must be something else than 

 amphigony with all its promising paper potentialities. 

 The only resource left is to invoke " Lamarckian factors " 

 at this stage, in other words the effects of the environ- 

 ments upon individuals of these tiny dots, which must be 

 supposed to have carried on a struggle for existence in 

 the infinite bosom of the primeval seas ! Thus certain of 

 them must be supposed to have become better fitted to 

 survive than the remainder, and so crept into a higher place 

 and form of life. 



27 jSTow, out of such a totally inconceivable state of things 

 even if this theoretical transformation is to begin at all, we 

 are to believe that a little greater or less salinity, tempera- 

 ture or motion of the sea did verily cause such variations in 

 our " dots," during the ages which succeeded the Azoic, as 

 eventuated in Diatomacese with their perfect skeleton, or 

 such as Venus' Flower Basket among the sponges of early 

 Cambrian times. 



28 The only alternative mode, in which the transformation of 

 Alonera such as these into the Nautiloid Foraminifera, to take 

 one of multitudinous forms of surpassing beauty, can be 

 conceived (Mr. Spencer, I believe, will not allow that tliis is 

 even a conceivable or legitimate symbol) is that direct 

 creative acts took place at this and every other suited stage 



