result of this intoxication of the germs may be that the children
resulting from their conjugation become idiots, epileptics, dwarfs or
feeble minded. Thus it is not alcoholism or the craving for drink
which is inherited. No doubt the peculiarity of badly supporting
alcohol is inherited by ordinary heredity as a hereditary disposition,
but it is not this which produces the alcoholic degenerations of the
race. These are the result of the single blastophthoria. When, on the
other hand, a man is found to be imbecile or epileptic as the result
of the insobriety of his father, he preserves the tendency to transmit
his mental weakness or his epilepsy to his descendants, even when he
abstains completely from alcoholic drinks. In fact, the chromosomes of
the spermatozoid, from which about a half of his organism has issued,
have preserved the pathological derangement produced by the parental
alcoholism in their hereditary mneme, and have transmitted it to the
store of germinal cells of the feeble minded or the epileptic, who in
his turn transmits it to his descendants. From _Weismann's_ point of
view his hereditary determinants remain pathologically deviated. All
intoxications which alter the protoplasm of the germinal cells may
produce blastophthoric degenerations, which continue to menace several
successive generations in the form of hereditary taints.

Other deviations in the development of the germs may act in an
analogous manner to blastophthoria. We have mentioned above the
experiments of _Merrifield_ and _Standfuss_ on the caterpillars of
certain butterflies. Without being really of a pathological nature,
these actions of a physical agent on the hereditary energies resemble
blastophthoria.

Mechanical action on the embryo may also give rise to pathological
products or even mutilation. Thus, _Weismann_ demonstrated the
production of degenerate individuals in ants when certain coleoptera
were introduced in their nest, the ants being fond of the secretion of
the large glandular hairs of the coleoptera. The exact cause of the
degeneration has not yet been found, but the fact is certain. In man,
certain constitutional affections and congenital anomalies are the
result of certain diseases in the procreators, which have affected the
germinal cells or the embryo (for instance syphilis). As soon as the
blastophthoric actions cease in the procreators, those of their
descendants who live under a normal regimen have evidently a tend