TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the title page of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.
AN EXAMINATION
OF
WEISMANNISM
Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
AN EXAMINATION
OF
WEISMANNISM
BY
GEORGE JOHN ROMANES
M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.
HONORARY FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
London
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1893
PREFACE
As already stated in the Preface to the secondedition of Darwin and after Darwin, Part I, severeand protracted illness has hitherto prevented me fromproceeding to the publication of Part II. It is nowmore than a year since I had to suspend work ofevery kind, and therefore, although at that timePart II was almost ready for press, I have not yet beenable to write its concluding chapters. Shortly beforeand during this interval Professor Weismann hasproduced his essays on Amphimixis and The Germ-plasm.These works present extensive additions to,and considerable modifications of, his previous theoriesas collected together in the English translation, underthe title Essays on Heredity, Vol. I. Consequently,it has become necessary for me either to re-write theexamination of his system which I had prepared forPart II of my own treatise, or else to leave thatexamination as it stood, and to add a further chapterdealing with those later developments of his systemto which I have just alluded. After due reflection[vi]I have decided upon the latter course, because in thisway we are most likely to obtain a clear view of thegrowth of Weismann’s elaborate structure of theories—aview which it is almost necessary, for the purposesof criticism, that we should obtain.
Having decided upon this point, it occurred to methat certain advantages would be gained by removingthe whole criticism from the position which it wasoriginally intended to occupy as a section of myforthcoming volume on the Post-Darwinian period.For, in consequence of the criticism having beenwritten at successive intervals during the last six oreight years as Professor Weismann’s works successivelyappeared, it has now swelled to a bulk whichwould unduly encumber the volume just mentioned.Again, the growth of Professor Weismann’s systemhas of late become so rapid, that if the criticismis to keep pace with it in future, the best planwill doubtless be the one which it is now myintention to adopt—viz., to publish the criticism ina separate form, and in comparatively small editions,