1894.] Neo-Lamarckism and Neo-Darwinism. 673 
This conclusion is also unavoidable from another consider- 
ation—the fact that plants are asexual organisms at all times 
previous to flowering, and the germ-plasm must be preserved, 
in the meantime, along with the soma-plasm. But this con- 
clusion is inconsistent with Weismannism as taught at present, 
and this alone would lead me to discard the hypothesis for 
plants, however well it may apply to the animal kingdom. 
Henslow has made a different argument to show that the 
germ-plasm of plants may be directly exposed to external 
influence (Origin of Floral Structures). The germ-plasm is 
assumably located in the flower, and the egg-cell of the em- 
bryo-sac and the sperm-cell of the pollen grain are close to 
the surface, and are directly impressed by the interference of 
bees and other external stimuli. Henslow endeavors to show 
“that the infinite variety of adaptations to insects discoverable 
in flowers may have resulted through the direct action of the 
insects themselves, coupled with the responsive power of proto- 
plasm.” And these characters must be in part acquired dur- 
ing the lifetime of a given individual. 
2. It seems to me, also, that the presumption, upon general 
_ philosophical grounds, is against the doctrine that immediate 
external influences are without permanent effect. If we ad- 
mit—as all philosophers now do—that species are mutable, 
and that the forms of life have been shaped with reference to 
their adaptations to environment, then we are justified in assum- 
ing that every change in that environment must awaken some 
vital response in the species. If this response does not follow, 
then environment is without influence upon the organism ; or 
if it follows and is then not transmitted, it is lost just the same, 
and environment is impotent. And it does not matter if we 
assume, with the Neo-Darwinians, that this effect does not be- 
come hereditary until the germ is affected—that is, until two 
or more generations have lived under the impinging environ- 
ment—it must nevertheless follow that the change must have 
had a definite beginning in the lifetime of an individual; for 
it is impossible to conceive that a change has its origin in two 
generations. In other words, the beginning is singular; two 
generations is plural And whether the modification is di- - 
