GENEKAL INTBODDCTION. Ixiii 



Kverett Millais not only indicated lie agreed with them, 

 bnt in addition endeavoured to show that they were sup- 

 ported by the teaching of embryology. I must confess I 

 fail to find any evidence from embryology that, as Millais 

 puts it, " the sire influences what we can see, the colour 

 and anatomy ; and the female what we cannot see, i. e. the 

 internal organs." Huxley, twenty years ago, said, "It is 

 conceivable, and indeed probable, that every part of the 

 adult contains molecules derived both from the male and 

 the female parent, and that, regarded as a mass of mole- 

 cules, the entire organism may be compared to a web of 

 which the warp is derived from the female, and the woof 

 from the male."* The work of embryologists since 

 1878 may be said to have confirmed Huxley's view. By 

 speaking of the male as supplying the woof and the 

 female the warp, it is not meant that the male plays the 

 more prominent and important part, but rather that the 

 female is especially concerned in providing the substratum 

 on which all the organs and tissues, whether they be ex- 

 ternal or internal, are gradually built. 



When allowance is made for reversion, inbreeding, and 

 various other factors, it is extremely difHcult to estimate 

 how far the one sex predominates over the other. As 

 the female germ-cell (the egg) contains relatively far 

 more extra-nuclear protoplasm (cytoplasm) than the male 

 germ-cell, it might be argued that the female parent is 

 more than the male concerned with the actual structure 

 of all the organs and tissues, while the male and female 

 take an equal part in providing the " constitution, temper, 

 and habits." I think, however, it is safer to say, that 

 whatever peculiarities of structure and temperament have 

 been strongly inherited will be most readily transmitted, 

 regardless of the sex, v/hether they have been recently 

 acquired through inbreeding or derived from quite re- 

 mote ancestors. Save in inbred animals, characters, even 

 though no longer counting in the struggle for existence, 

 which have come down from remote ancestors are likely 

 to be strongly transmitted, whether they predominate iu 

 * "Eyolutiou/' p. 296, 'Enc. Brit.,' 1878. 



