Galton; DeVries; Weismann 283 
ditional rejection of the inheritance of acquired char- 
acters. Nevertheless he did not immediately venture to 
go so far but continued to admit as a sort of concession 
that in the adult organism a gemmule might occasionally 
escape from the somatic cell, which had produced it and 
was also its customary abode, even though this cell had 
been only shortly before acquired in consequence of a new 
functional adaptation; then this gemmule might be taken 
up by the reproductive organs and become likewise a part 
of the stirp and the acquired character which had ap- 
peared in the somatic cells might thus be inherited.?!3 
In the case of DeVries we should remark that he 
assumes that the germinal substance, that is the sum total 
of the pangens, is present equally in all nuclei only be- 
cause he, as we have also seen in the case of Driesch, took 
it for granted that nuclear divisions are qualitatively 
equal. If then a nucleus of a somatic cell acquired new 
pangens, as a consequence of a new local functional 
adaptation, then they would have to remain in the place 
where they arose and could not enter the reproductive 
cells also. And so much the more since he also asserts 
that the substance which will later actually form the 
sexual cells separate itself from the soma immediately, at 
the commencement of development, and passes along cer- 
tain “Keimbahnen,” which may be recognized, chiefly 
because upon them the greater part of the pangens remain 
inactive.?14 
In respect to Weismann we remark once again that in 
consequence of a more rigorous logical elaboration of the 
doctrine of prefotmistic germs, which has convinced him 
218Galton: A Theory of Heredity. Journ. of the Anthropo- 
logical Institute. January 1876. P. 342—343. 
214De Vries: Intracellulare Pangenesis. P. 188—180. 
