DOM ae 
670 The American Ni aturalist. [August, 
“in which such separation [of the germ-plasm from the soma- 
plasm] does not take place until after the animal is completely 
formed, and others, as I believe that I have shown, in which 
it first arises one or two generations later, viz.,in the buds 
produced by the parent.” And he has been compelled to ad- 
mit that in the case of begonias, which are propagated by 
leaves, the germ-plasm is probably distributed throughout the 
foliage; and he must make a similar admission for all plants, 
for they can all be propagated and modified through asexual 
parts. This is admitting, then, that there is no localized germ- 
plasm in the vegetable kingdom and in some instances in the 
animal kingdom; and if the germ-plasm is distributed to the 
very periphery of the organism, why may it not be directly 
affected by environment, the same as the soma-plasm is? Or 
why is the hypothesis any the less objectionable than Darwin’s 
pangenesis, which supposes that every organic unit can com- 
municate with the germ ? 
Weismann also supposes, as I have said, that the means by 
which the germ-plasm is able to reconstruct the soma-plasm 
in the offspring, is through some modification in its “ molecu- 
lar constitution,” an assumption which was by no means novel 
when Weismann announced it. “The exact manner in which 
we imagine the subsequent differentiation of the colony to be 
potentially present in the reproductive cell," he writes, “ be- 
comes a matter of comparatively small importance. It may 
consist in a different molecular arrangement, or in some change 
of chemical constitution, or it may be due to both these causes 
combined.” In whatever manner the germ-plasm receives its 
somatic influences, there must be a direct connection between 
the two, and it is quite as easy to assume the existence of gem- 
mules as any less tangible influence. I am not arguing in 
favor of pangenesis, but only stating what seems to me to be 
a valid objection to the fundamental constitution of the Weis- 
mannian|hypothesis—that it is quite as easy to assume, from 
the argument, one interpretation of the process or means of 
heredity as another. And if there is any vital connection 
whatever between the soma-plasm and the germ-plasm—as the 
