No. 637] 



IMMUNE SERA 



107 



we may suspect, though perhaps it is heresy to do so, 

 that it is a well-sounding phrase that is the equivalent of 

 the three words, I don't know. Unwilling to admit of 

 the modifying influence of external agencies on the germ, 

 such theorists resort to the fiction of a spontaneous 

 change. Coleridge somewhere has said "What's gray 

 with age becomes religion." We have toyed so long with 

 this idea of germinal continuity and the invulnerability 

 of the germ, that it has become for some of us well nigh 

 sacrosanct. Living matter is living matter wherever it 

 may be found, but when it happens to be in the germ- 

 cells, verily, "this corruptible has put on incorruption 

 and this mortal immortality"! 



Now, no one to-day, qualified by his knowledge of em- 

 bryology and genetics to the right of an opinion, would, 

 I think, deny that the new organism is in the main the 

 expression of what was in the germ-line, rather than of 

 what it got directly from the body of its parents, but does 

 this fact necessarily carry with it the implication that 

 the germ is insusceptible to modification from without? 

 Is not the serum of organisms with blood or lymph an 

 excellent medium through which external influences may 

 operate upon it? Is it not more reasonable to postulate 

 the origination of germinal changes through some such 

 mechanism as this than to attribute it to mysterious 

 "spontaneous changes"? 



With such thoughts in mind I and my research asso- 

 ciate, Dr. E. A. Smith, set about making various tcsts.^ 

 Without attempting to tell yon o( our as yet uiisuecess- 

 ful attempts to secure cytolysins which will operate in 

 the developmental stages of such ])ciM<ulically renewed 



of mil- varioii- nthcr rnilurcs <.t' which th.-re ai^' an 

 abuiuhnic. 1 wish lo ^jM-ak hri.lly about certain ante- 

 natal enVct> ^vr >ccurc.l ill rainut> l.y nican> of fowl- 

 serum >ciisltizr.l a-ai!.>t rahhit ci-v>talliiie l.-n<. aii.l of 

 the fact tliat >uch lii.huM.l (Irfc.-t- may hccun.^ heritable. 



