94 An Examination of Weismannism. 



Jordan, and others., did not find individual variations 

 produced in plants by changed conditions of life to 

 be inherited, — the reply would be irrelevant. It does 

 not require to be proved that all variations produced 

 by changed conditions of life are inherited. If only 

 some — even though it be but an extremely small 

 percentage — of such variations are proved to be 

 inherited, the many millions of years that separate 

 the germ-plasm of to-day from its supposed origin 

 in the protozoa, must have furnished opportunities 

 enough for the occurrence of such variations to have 

 obliterated, and re-obliterated numberless times, any 

 aboriginal differences in the germ-plasms of in- 

 cipiently sexual organisms. Moreover, it is probable 

 that when further experiments shall have been made 

 in this direction, Hoffmann's results will be found 

 not so exceptional as they at present appear. 

 Mr. Mivart, for example, has mentioned several 

 instances l ; while there are not a few facts of 

 general knowledge — such as the modifications under- 

 gone by certain Crustacea as a direct result of 

 increased salinity of the water in which they live — 

 that will probably soon be proved to be facts of the 

 same order. But here attention must be directed 

 to another large body of facts, which are of high 

 importance in the present connexion. 



The phenomena of what is called bud-variation in 

 plants are phenomena of not infrequent occurrence, 

 and they consist in the sudden appearance of a 

 peculiarity on the part of a shoot which develops 

 from a single bud. When such a peculiarity arises, 

 it admits of being propagated, not only by cuttings 



1 Nature, Nov. 14, 1S89, p. 41. 



