10 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
body of the new individual is formed from germ plasma 
which is derived from the germ plasma of the parent, and 
has nothing to do with the parent’s body, ‘which was 
distinguished by the acquired character, except that it lay 
in that body (or somatoplasm).* But if any day an 
experimental biologist should be able to prove that a single 
acquired character had been transmitted to the offspring, 
and Mr. Francis Galton has just suggested+ some experi- 
ments which seem practicable and very suitable for settling 
the question, and which might give some day a positive 
result, then that one fact would outweigh any amount of 
theory, and it would be necessary for us to revise our ideas 
in regard to heredity. 
Consequently it would be very satisfactory to those 
biologists who are inclined to accept Weismann’s theory 
of the continuity of the germ plasma, but at the same 
time would admit the possibility of acquired characters 
being sometimes transmitted, if a loophole could be found 
in the theory which would allow of the germ plasma being 
impressed by an acquired character, and for my own part 
I do not see any great difficulty in the way. The germ 
plasma, it must be remembered, lies in the somatoplasm 
or body plasma and is surrounded by and in intimate 
histological connection with the body which has the 
acquired character—it is nourished by and is in complete 
physiological communication with that body. Therefore 
but such an individual only forms, as it were, the nutritive soil at the expense 
of which the germ-plasm grows, while the latter possessed its characteristic 
structure from the beginning, viz. before the commencement of growth.” — 
(Essays wpon Heredity, &c., by Dr. August Weismann, authorised translation, 
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1889, Essay v., p 266.) 
* Weismann, however, admits that the germ plasma lying in the somato- 
plasm may be influenced by external conditions so as to give rise to 
‘‘blastogenic” characters in the next generation (loc. cit. p. 410). 
t To Section D, at Newcastle meeting of British Association, Sept., 1889. 
