[BI]Geddes and Thomson, "The Evolution of Sex," p. 92.
[BJ]Weismann, "Essays on Heredity," English translation, p. 173.
[BK]Weismann, "Essays on Heredity," p. 205.
[BL]A few pages earlier (p. 200) in the same essay, Professor Weismann says, "A sudden transformation of the nucleo-plasm of a somatic cell into that of a germ-cell would be almost as incredible as the transformation of a mammal into an amœba." This at first sight does not seem quite consistent with the subsequent sentence which I have quoted in the text; for here, at any rate, the daughters of "mammals" are said to be converted into "amœbæ." But this is no doubt because the amœbæ (germ-plasms) are contained in the mammals (body-cells). (See the quotations that follow in the text.)
[BM]Weismann, "Essays on Heredity," p. 207.
[BN]Weismann, "Essays on Heredity," p. 179.
[BO]It will, of course, be understood that a minute fragment of germ-plasm is capable of almost unlimited growth by assimilation of nutritive material, its properties remaining unchanged during such growth.
[BP]Latency is here neglected. Mr. Francis Galton has shown, statistically, that the offspring, among human folk, inherit 1/4 from each parent, 1/16 from each grandparent, and the remaining 1/4 from more remote ancestors. In domesticated animals, reversion to characters of distant ancestors sometimes occurs. This, however, does not invalidate the argument in the text, which is that sexual admixture tends towards the mean of the race (ancestors included), and cannot be credited with new and unusually favourable variations. The prepotency of one parent is also here neglected.
[BQ]See his valuable paper on "Divergent Evolution," Lin. Soc. Zool., No. cxx.
[BR]One parthenogenetic form—the drone—has been shown by Blochmann to extrude a second polar cell. This observation is in serious opposition to Dr. Weismann's theory.