262 Theories Treating of Inheritance 
In the process of embryonic growth, one mode of motion 
would generate its sucessor in obedience to the molecular 
structural record first laid down in the ovum and sperma- 
tozooid, and then combined and recomposed on the union 
of the two in the odspore, or fertilized ovum.” 
“Were all cells identical in characters, every one 
would retain the structural record or memory of its past 
physical history as do the unicellular organisms. Evolu- 
tion has however so modified most of the structural 
units of the organic body that none but the nervous 
and reproductive cells retain this record in greater or 
less perfection. The nervous cells have been specialized 
as the recipients of new impressions, and the excitors of 
definite corresponding movements in the cells of the re- 
mainder of the organism. The somatic cells retain only 
the record or memory of their special function. On 
the other hand the reproductive cells which most nearly 
resemble the independent unicellular organisms, retain 
first the impression received during their primitive 
unicellular ancestral condition; and second, those which 
they have acquired through the organism of which they 
have been and are only a part.” 19° 
As we shall devote ourselves in the last chapter to 
the comparison of the ontogenetic phenomenon with the 
mnemonic, it will suffice here to bring forward, as a 
contradiction to the same author’s assertion reported 
above in respect to a single dynamic mode in the whole 
organism, the complete mnemonic somatization of the 
specialized somatic cells, or nuclear somatization, which 
this investigator recognized, and also his suggestive sub- 
stantial equalization of the nerve cells with the repro- 
*°°Cope: Ibid. P. 451—453. 
