1897.] The Limits of Organic Selection. 947 
It appears that the idea involved in Organic Selection is 
by no means a new one, it is formulated, for example, but not 
with especial stress or clearness by Weismann ‘ in his Romanes 
Lecture of 1894, as shown in the following selections from pages 
11-17 (italics our own) :* 
“ Hermann Meyer seems to have been the first to call atten- 
tion to the adaptiveness as regards minute structure in animal 
tissues, which is most strikingly exhibited in the architecture 
of the spongy substance of the long bones in the higher verte- 
brates. . . . . But the direction, position and strength of 
these bony plates are by no means innate or determined in ad- 
vance: they depend on circumstances. . It is 
not the particular adaptive structure themselves that are 
transmitted, but only the quality of the material from 
which intra-selection forms these structures anew in every in- 
dividual life. Peculiarities of biophors and cells are trans- 
mitted, and these may become more and more favorable and 
adaptive in the course of generations if they are subject to 
natural selection. . . . . JIntra-selection effects the special 
adaptation of the tissues to special conditions of development in each 
individual. . . . . Let us take the well-known instance of 
the gradual increase in development of the deer’s antlers, in 
consequence of which the head, in the course of generations, 
has become more and more heavily loaded. . . . . It is 
by no means necessary that all the parts concerned—skull, 
muscles and ligaments of the neck, cervical vertebra, bones of 
the fore-limbs, etc—should simultaneously adapt themselves 
by variation of the germ to the increase in the size of the ant- 
lers ; for in each separate individual the necessary adaptation will 
be temporarily accomplished by intra-selection—by the struggle of 
parts—under the trophic influence of functional stimulus. 
But as the primary variations in the. phyletic metamorphosis 
occurred little by little, the secondary adaptations would prob- 
ably, as a rule, be able to keep pace with them. Time would 
thus be gained till, in the course of generations, by constant selection 
of those germs the primary constituents of which are best suited to 
‘The Effect of External Influences upon Development. The Romanes Lec- 
. ture, 1894. London, 1894. i 
