he transplanted egg was
already full-grown and fertilized when the transfer was made, and that
therefore no modification need be expected. If the egg were transferred
at an earlier stage, it was thought, the result might be different.
W. E. Castle and J. C. Phillips therefore undertook an experiment to
which this objection should not be possible.[195]
"A female albino guinea-pig just attaining sexual maturity was by an
operation deprived of its ovaries, and instead of the removed ovaries
there were introduced into her body the ovaries of a young black female
guinea-pig, not yet sexually mature, aged about three weeks. The grafted
animal was now mated with a male albino guinea-pig. From numerous
experiments with albino guinea-pigs it may be stated emphatically that
normal albinos mated together, without exception, produce only albino
young, and the presumption is strong, therefore, that had this female
not been operated on she would have done the same. She produced,
however, by the albino male three litters of young, which together
consisted of six individuals, all black. The first litter of young was
produced about six months after the operation, the last about one year.
The transplanted ovarian tissue must have remained in its new
environment therefore from four to ten months before the eggs attained
full growth and were discharged; ample time, it would seem, for the
influence of a foreign body upon the inheritance to show itself were
such influence possible."
While such experiments must not be stretched too far, in application to
the human species, they certainly offer striking evidence of the fact
that the characters of any individual are mainly due to something in the
germ-plasm, and that this germ-plasm is to a surprising degree
independent of any outside influence, even such an intimate influence as
that of the body of the mother in which it reaches maturity.
APPENDIX B
"DYNAMIC EVOLUTION"
As C. L. Redfield has secured considerable publicity for his attempt to
bolster up the Lamarckian theory, it deserves a few words of comment.
His contention is that "the energy in animals, known as intelligence and
physical strength, is identical with the energy known in mechanics, and
is governed by the same laws." He therefore concludes that (1) an animal
stores up energy in its body, in some undescribed and mystical way, and
(2) that in some equally undescribed and mystical way it transmits this
stored-up
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