272 The Queensland Naturalist. Vol. 1 
Germinal election and elimination offer a simple ex- 
planation of all the phenomena of variation. They explain 
why characteristics, which are not favourable or necessary 
to the individual are eliminated others formed. Such, for 
instance, as the loss of the hind legs of the whale, ' the 
degeneration in the molluscs.- They explain much more 
rationally, why the giraffe has a long neck. This is not 
because the animal was in the habit of stretching it ; the 
effect of it being handed on as a special character : nor, as 
Darwin says, those who could not stretch enough were 
eliminated but simply because nature eliminated those 
potentialities which tended to produce short necks, while 
fostering those which tended to produce long necks, and 
increased these values from generation to generation.' 
But the ernbryo or individual is only an incident in the 
chain of certain phenomena. At the time prior to the 
unfolding of the individual all germ-cells are alike : so much 
so that if all germ-cells were to develop and form embryos 
they would all be alike in potentialities and character. 
Identical twins are not at all of rare occurrence. Francis 
Galton traced the history of about 80 of them, as far as he 
could, and noted the frequency at which both suffered at 
the same time from identical ailments, such as cancer. In 
some cases he found a remarkable association of ideas. But 
until determined theoretically, it was not observed that 
two kinds of identical twins occur. In the one kind, say 
A. B. and A. B., we deal with individuals, cast as it were in 
the same mould : while in the other kind A. B. and B. A., 
the one is a looking glass image of the other, and this 
reversal even extends to the reversal of the visceral organs. 
These facts can only be explained by theories of Heredity 
based on an actual continuance of germ- cells. By cell 
division of the fore-runners of the germ- cells, germ- cells are 
formed with like potentialities and character. These products 
are right and left handed. If two right or two left hand 
products grow and develop, they result in identical twins of 
the same mould, if a right and a left, looking glass, or 
reversed, identical twins are the result, 
Butler, from his speculative imagination, and Hering, 
as a result of his researches have come to the conclusion 
that “ unconscious memory ” is the simple explanation of 
all phenomena of Heredity. We link together yesterday 
and to-day, childhood and old age into a continuous chain 
by memory. Memory is a property of living matter. Of 
two primary cells of any animal development, one becomes 
the individual — the other continues the cycle of the germ- 
cells. So alike are they, that had they developed they 
would have been identical twins. Neither of them in the 
ancestry had ever been a higher animal, neither they nor 
