306 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
made suggestion that the double-tailed races of Gold-Carp owe the 
doubling of the anal and caudal fins to a remote ancestral condition in 
fishes, in which paired lateral fin-folds extended for the whole length 
of the body. As many of the conditions are perfectly parallel to those 
seen in traumaticallv deformed trout the author thinks that it is almost 
conclusively proven that the double-tailed races of Gold-Carp have arisen 
in the first place as a consequence of injuries inflicted during the early 
development of the eggs and embryos, and that the effects of these 
embryonic traumatisms have become hereditarily transmissible. 
Inheritance of Mutilations.* — Dr. 0. vom Rath criticizes some 
cases of apparent transmission of mutilations. There was a pair of 
terriers, descended from normal parents, and producing normal offspring. 
By an accident the upper portion of the right humerus of the male was 
broken, and the result was a permanent injury. Some time after con- 
valescence there was a litter — a female and two male offspring ; the 
female was quite normal, hut died, and the mother also came to its end ; 
one of the male offspring was the picture of its mother ; the other had 
an abnormally placed right fore-limb and a limp ! In certain details, 
however, which we need not give, the lameness of the offspring was 
different from that of the parent. Dr. vom Rath points out in an un- 
biassed manner the possible interpretations, which must be obvious to 
those who have followed recent discussions. 
Herr S., a normal, well-proportioned man, was wont from his youth 
to put the point of his right foot further outwards than the left ; his 
three sons directed the points of both feet outwards in a similar manner. 
Now the father of Herr S. had, when a young man, an accident which 
led to an outward pointing of his left foot. But inquiry showed that 
Herr S. junior was several years of age when his father met with his 
accident; moreover, Herr S. senior had always had a weakness in his 
right leg. Comment is unnecessary. A third very interesting case is 
described in which a duel-mark seemed to be transmitted through two 
generations. The author sums up cautiously against the likelihood of 
somatogenic characters being transmitted. 
The Germ-Plasm.f — Prof. A. Weismann has in his recently published 
volume worked out his theory of heredity, which centres around his 
conception of the germ-plasm. This germ-plasm is a nuclear substance 
which contains reserve vital units or biophors for the construction of 
the corresponding cell-body, as well as for the formation of all the cell- 
bodies of the entire organism. All these biophors are connected together 
into a definitely arranged structure in such a manner that the constituent 
parts share regularly and successively, and not simultaneously, in the 
control of the cell-body. In order that this result may be produced, 
the biophors are combined to form units of a higher order — the deter- 
minants, each of which controls one kind of cell, and consequently 
includes all the biophors required for the determination of this particular 
kind of cell. The germ-cell contains at least as many determinants as 
there are different cells or groups of cells in the fully formed organism 
* Biol. Centralbl., xiii. (1893) pp. 65-76. 
f ‘ The Germ Plasm : A Theory of Heredity,’ translated by W. Newton Parker 
and Harriet Ronnfeldt, London, 1893, 8vo, xxii. and 447 pp., 24 figs. 
