ofessor Weismann says about it; all I am concerned with is
Professor Weismann's admission, made immediately afterwards, that the
somatic cells may, and perhaps sometimes do, impart characteristics to
the germ-cells.

"A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion," he
continues, "cannot be brought forward at present"; so I suppose we must
wait a little longer, but in the meantime we may again remark that, if we
admit even occasional communication of changes in the somatic cells to
the germ-cells, we have let in the thin end of the wedge, as Mr. Darwin
did when he said that use and disuse did a good deal towards
modification. Buffon, in his first volume on the lower animals, {37}
dwells on the impossibility of stopping the breach once made by admission
of variation at all. "If the point," he writes, "were once gained, that
among animals and vegetables there had been, I do not say several
species, but even a single one, which had been produced in the course of
direct descent from another species; if, for example, it could be once
shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the horse--then there is
no farther limit to be set to the power of Nature, and we should not be
wrong in supposing that with sufficient time she could have evolved all
other organised forms from one primordial type." So with use and disuse
and transmission of acquired characteristics generally--once show that a
single structure or instinct is due to habit in preceding generations,
and we can impose no limit on the results achievable by accumulation in
this respect, nor shall we be wrong in conceiving it as possible that all
specialisation, whether of structure or instinct, may be due ultimately
to habit.

How far this can be shown to be probable is, of course, another matter,
but I am not immediately concerned with this; all I am concerned with now
is to show that the germ-cells not unfrequently become permanently
affected by events that have made a profound impression upon the somatic
cells, in so far that they transmit an obvious reminiscence of the
impression to the embryos which they go subsequently towards forming.
This is all that is necessary for my case, and I do not find that
Professor Weismann, after all, disputes it.

But here, again, comes the difficulty of saying what Professor Weismann
does, and what he does not, dispute. One moment he gives all that is
wanted for the Lamarckian contention, the next he denies common-s