Part 4

Questions of heredity and variation are cytological ones—that is, questions of the anatomy, physiology, physiological chemistry, and pathology of cells. The most important part of a cell, as far as these questions are concerned, is the =nucleus=. The nucleus is the physical basis of all the heritages of an organism, from the simplest to the most complex. The nuclear threads may, therefore, very appropriately be termed the _hereditary threads_, or, collectively, the hereditary mass; and the physiological units in them the _hereditary units_. The nucleus is of fundamental importance in the reproduction or multiplication of both unicellular and multicellular animals and plants.

In unicellular creatures multiplication may take place by fission and by conjugation. Both of these processes can be studied by observation of the infusorians. Maupas’s beautiful investigations on these unicellular animals have demonstrated that multiplication by fission may proceed to a prodigious extent for many generations, but that a time comes when the process fails, and the species will become exhausted and die out unless there is a rejuvenation of it by conjugation of individuals. In conjugation two individual infusoria come in apposition with each other, the nucleus in each undergoes subdivision. They reciprocally exchange part of their nuclear contents so that each infusorian comes to contain hereditary threads of two distinct individuals. From these rejuvenated (or fertilized) individuals multitudes of others may be derived by fission until exhaustion again takes place.

Multiplication in multicellular creatures may be accomplished by budding (which is allied to fission), and is exemplified in the plant, hydra, the queen bee (parthenogenesis), etc., and by fertilization (which is allied to conjugation). A knowledge of the phenomena of fertilization of the ovum by the spermatozoid is essential to any understanding of the problems of heredity and variation in mankind. The nuclear threads of the ovum are its hereditary threads—the _groups of maternal hereditary units_; likewise, the nucleus of the spermatozoid contains the _paternal groups of hereditary units_.

=Fertilization.= In fertilization, the spermatozoid (a nucleated flagellate cell) penetrates the ovum (a nucleated, encysted cell), its protoplasm mixes with that of the ovum, and its nuclear threads come into relation with the nuclear threads of the ovum; so that the fertilized ovum (a new creature, a veritable microcosm) is still a nucleated cell, but one in which the nucleus is compound, is _hermaphroditic_, in that it contains maternal and paternal threads—that is, maternal and paternal hereditary units which constitute its hereditary mass.

It will be convenient to speak of the maternal and paternal hereditary units in the fertilized ovum as _ancestral hereditary units_.

This hermaphroditic cell passes through complex phases, illustrated by embryology, to the adult. In doing so this hermaphroditic cell (mother cell) first divides into two smaller cells (daughter cells). The mother cell divides in such a way (by mitosis) that one-half of its nucleus and part of its protoplasm goes to one daughter cell and the other half of the nucleus, with the remainder of the protoplasm, goes to the other daughter cell. It is an interesting fact that although the amount of protoplasm which goes from the mother cell to the two daughter cells may be unequal at times, yet the amount of the nucleus in one daughter cell is always exactly equal[2] to that in the other; _so that each daughter cell contains maternal and paternal hereditary masses of equal quantity and quality_, being in fact one-half that of the fertilized ovum. In consequence of the fact that each hereditary unit in the nucleus of the daughter cell can absorb nutriment and grow, it comes about that the nucleus of each daughter cell attains to the size of that of the mother cell. The enveloping protoplasm of the nuclei also grows to a greater or less extent, so that the cells as a whole grow. These two daughter cells go through the same process and form other daughter cells, and so on through all the mitoses of development, until all the myriads of cells of a living organism are produced, _each of which contains maternal and paternal hereditary masses of equal quality and quantity, and also of the same character as that of the fertilized ovum whence they are all derived_.

Apart from their activity in absorbing nutriment and growing, the great majority of the hereditary units in the nuclei of the forming cells remain latent. But some of the hereditary units in each cell produced are active. They multiply, grow and migrate out of the nucleus, and get among the units of the enveloping protoplasm. During this activity they undergo physical and chemical changes and effect corresponding differentiations in the protoplasm of the cell. Thus, through many mitoses and many differentiations of the protoplasm of cells, we finally derive from the fertilized ovum all the cells that constitute the adult body, such as muscle cells, glandular cells (as liver cells, kidney cells, etc.), nerve cells, skeletal cells (as bone, cartilage, and connective-tissue cells), and the ova and spermatozoids. According to this theory, the _nucleus_ of each cell in the adult animal or plant is _pure hereditary mass_, exactly like that in the nucleus of the fertilized ovum; but the _protoplasm_ of each adult cell that envelopes the nucleus may differ greatly in different cell groups, as in muscle, nerve, cartilage, and the like. Of course, the protoplasm of those cells that develop into the ova and the spermatozoids has differentiated along such lines as to become like that of the ovum and spermatozoid, the junction of which formed the fertilized ovum. These statements hold true for plants and the lower animal organisms, although they cannot be verified for the higher animals. More than likely the pure hereditary masses are present in the body (somatic) cells of the higher organism in latent conditions, but are unable ever to be developed owing to the greater specialization of these cells. It is thus seen that all the cells of many animals and plants can perform their own special functions and at the same time contain all of the hereditary units of the complex organism in a state ready to develop under favoring conditions.

Since the ova and spermatozoids are cells specially differentiated for the purpose of propagating the species by sexual generation, and since their conjugation produces the germ of a new creature, they may very appropriately be spoken of as =germ cells=. Since all the other cells of the adult form the great bulk of the body that envelopes and protects the germ cells, they may be termed the =body cells=, or =somatic cells=.

Suppose that ova, containing maternal and paternal groups of hereditary units, are fertilized by similarly complex spermatozoids, and the process is repeated generation after generation. There will come a time when the fertilized ovum will have a highly complex nucleus composed of _many different ancestral groups of hereditary units_.

One often hears the expression that a child is a chip of the old block; but this is only a very partial truth, for a child is preëminently a composite chip of many old blocks.

The complex nucleus of the fertilized ovum may be compared to a modern Italian building which has been constructed of material—a column here, a cornice there, a lintel yonder—gathered from different classic buildings of varying antiquity. In view of the increasing number of ancestral groups of hereditary units that must have accumulated in the nuclei of ova in the course of time, there must necessarily, for mechanical reasons, have arrived a period when these nuclei could receive no more of them by fertilization, unless natural selection should develop some saving device; hence we have, possibly, an explanation of the phenomena of maturation in ova (the _reducing process_ of Weismann and Hertwig). Here the ovum, prior to fertilization, undergoes mitosis twice in succession, by which the polar bodies are formed and the hereditary mass is diminished by one-half (the mature germ cells having only one-half the number of nuclear threads that the body cells possess). A homologous process takes place in the maturation of spermatozoids. Fertilization increases the amount of the hereditary mass in the ovum to the original quantity, and thus restores the number of nuclear threads to the specific number. All the body cells derived from the fertilized ovum possess, also, the specific number of threads.

This union of two distinct hereditary masses is called _amphimixis_ as well as _fertilization_.

Maturation and amphimixis or fertilization are _the source of many variations in the body_, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, geniuses and monstrosities; because, in the commingling of distinct hereditary masses, there is a struggle for existence between the hereditary units and a survival of the fittest.

In this struggle some of the hereditary units are strengthened so that heritages may be augmented; some mix so that there may be a blending of characteristics; some are mutually exclusive; some are prepotent; some are neutralized; some are destroyed; some lie dormant (latent) for varying lengths of time, and some are so altered as to produce much modified forms; and thus the possibilities of combination, reactions and modifications of the hereditary units, and therefore heritages, are almost endless.

The _augmentation of heritages_ in the fertilized ovum is well displayed, for instance, where fleet horses are bred with fleet ones, until, by careful selection, generation after generation, a progeny may be secured much more swift than the original stock from whence they were derived. In the same way good milch cows have been produced.

The mixing of hereditary units and _blending of heritages_ is shown in the color of the skin, as where a mulatto child is born to a negress by a white father; _mutually exclusive heritages_ are well illustrated in the color of the eyes, as where a child has either the blue eyes of one parent or the black of the other, but never any blending of the colors; this may also be illustrated where the white game bird and black one are crossed, the young being either white or black, but never blended. _Prepotency_ is illustrated where the silky variety of fan-tailed pigeon is mated with any other small-sized variety of pigeon, for the silkiness is invariably transmitted. A most interesting case of prepotency in mankind, mentioned by Ribot, is that of Lislet-Geoffrey, an engineer in Mauritius. He was the son of a very stupid negress and an educated white man. In physical constitution he was as much a negro as his mother; he had the woolly hair, the features, the complexion, and the peculiar odor of his race. He was so thoroughly a white man as regards intellectual development that he succeeded in vanquishing the prejudices of race, so strong in the French colonies, and in being admitted into the most aristocratic houses. At the time of his death he was Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences.

In this, it will be observed, we have prepotency in the mother’s physical constitution, and in the father’s intellectual characteristics.

The struggle of heritages in the impregnated ovum may lead to such structural changes of the nucleus, and therefore of the cell, as to develop the most marked variations—such variations as the biologists call _sports_.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the farmers of Massachusetts had flocks of ordinary sheep on their farms. These sheep were continually jumping fences and getting on neighboring farms. They were the source of many disputes and much irritation between neighboring farmers. Finally, one of the sheep had a lamb which, when grown, displayed well-marked peculiarities (a sport). It had a longer body than the ordinary sheep and shorter legs, which were bowed. It was noticed that this sheep could not get over the fences. The cute Yankee farmer, noticing this valuable peculiarity, carefully preserved this peculiar sheep, and from it was ultimately derived, by careful selective breeding, a special variety known as the Ancon sheep.

The germinal variations resulting from the mixing of two separate hereditary masses by impregnation find their expression in the most varied qualities of the minds and bodies of developing children. If the variations are not especially marked, they are looked upon as normal and attract no special attention.

But if the variations are so pronounced as to compel attention, and at the same time it is known that they are useful, they are spoken of as talents, or, on the other hand, if they are harmful or useless, they are designated as pathological or monstrosities.

These are truly what the biologists call sports; and to those classes of sports that occur as specially gifted in human culture, in the varied fields of science, art, or literature, we assign such a person as Shakespeare, and call the remarkable variations embodied in him genius. On the other hand, such variations as lead to certain forms of pigmentary degeneration of the retina, and to Daltonism, to dyschromatopsia and achromatopsia, to certain supernumerary glands, polydactylism, and such like, which are either useless or harmful, we designate as pathological cases or monstrosities.

Hereditary units (the carriers of heritages) may be _latent_—that is, they may appear late in life, or in the offspring, or, still again, in remote descendants; in the latter cases the heritages are spoken of as reversional or _atavistic_. Latent hereditary units may very usefully be compared to dormant seeds buried in the ground. It is stated that buried seeds may lie dormant for many years, so that when a plot of ground is plowed deeply and upturned, plants that have not been seen there within the memory of one will often make their appearance and flourish. The hereditary units are veritable _living seeds_, that, under certain and often unknown stimuli, grow and unfold their heritages as do the buried seeds.

Latent heritages are well illustrated by a study of secondary sexual characters as developed at puberty.

Among our barnyard fowls, the hens often, when they have atrophy or degeneration of the ovaries, although up to this time they have laid eggs for years, stop this function, put aside the plumage and appearance proper to their sex, and don more or less completely the garments of the rooster. Thus females have latent in them many secondary sexual characters of the male. For similar reasons the male develops, occasionally, female characters.

This latency is illustrated again in deer. In most species of the deer tribe the males alone possess antlers, yet it is a well-known circumstance that in females with degenerations of the ovaries rudimentary horns that are never shed appear. A study of congenital color-blindness illustrates beautifully latent heritages, showing how the females of one generation may be free from the malady and the males of the next afflicted.

A study of the _regeneration of lost parts_ in various animals and plants illustrates well the latency of many hereditary units. A cutting made from the willow and planted sends out roots and finally reaches the dimensions of the adult tree. Here the body cells of the stem evidently contained, in a latent condition, many hereditary units in their nuclei, which became active through the special stimulus of being planted as a cutting. Adult plants can be raised from the cuttings of many other plants.

If the garden worm is cut in two, the head-part will reproduce the tail-portion. If the little fresh-water polyp, Hydra, be cut into a number of pieces, each segment will reproduce a perfect animal. Many lizards, after losing their tails by violence, manufacture new tails through the agency of the latent hereditary units contained in the body cells of the stump left. If the tentacle or “horn” of a snail, which contains an eye with a perfect lens and retina, be cut off, the animal can reproduce another one with a perfect eye, and this can be repeated a number of times. Often newts, when fighting with one another, or lobsters when fighting, lose a leg or a claw. These highly organized animals have the power of creating new limbs, making bones, ligaments, muscles, nerves, cuticle, and so on. All of this is done _through the hereditary masses in the nuclei of the body cells_ at the site of the injury.

A study of the phenomena of polymorphism in hydroids and insects will beautifully and most interestingly illustrate latent hereditary units.

Much that is speculative and fanciful is included under the subject of atavism, and the safest plan for pathologists and biologists, in considering any abnormality, is to remember a golden rule of Gegenbaur, that only those structures are reversional which are taxonomically not far distant or phylogenetically not very old. Embryology is also a very important check in considering such subjects.

In mankind supernumerary limbs and digits, microcephalia and micrencephalia, have been looked upon as reversions to the simian type.

Lombroso, in contrasting the criminal with normal man, looks upon his _homo delinquens_ as an illustration of atavism, contrasting with _homo sapiens_. But, as Ziegler, in his _Pathology_, well observes, many writers have gone too far in this respect, and have characterized as atavistic formations various acquired pathological formations and fresh variations of germ cells.

I think one can safely say that supernumerary ribs and those supernumerary nipples and mammary glands along the line of the deep epigastric and internal mammary arteries are truly atavistic structures; also certain muscles normally belonging to those mammalia which come near to man in the scale of relationship, and which appear in man as muscular variations, are reversional.

Children are often born with pigmented hairy patches on their bodies known as moles; sometimes these hairy moles are only of the size of a split pea, in other cases they are several square inches in area, while in rare cases almost all of the trunk may be thus covered. Although many similar pathological cases are often but marked variations called sports, yet the illustrations mentioned are undoubtedly reversional. Of the multitudinous illustrations of atavism that could be mentioned I wish to refer to but one more case.

The conjunctiva is a modification of skin, and frequently proclaims its ancestry by reverting to its original form. It is by no means a very rare event to see a patient having a patch of hair-covered skin growing upon the ocular conjunctiva. While a clinical assistant at the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital in London, we saw one such case, and Dr. Treacher Collins, the pathologist of that eye hospital, has stated that about twelve cases are seen there annually of this pathological condition, which is atavistic, according to Sutton, although it seemingly violates Gegenbaur’s rule about phylogenetic remoteness, and may be looked upon by some as a pathological illustration of a sport.

In speaking of inheritance, we should carefully discriminate between _heredity_ and _pseudo-heredity_. Physicians constantly write of tuberculosis, lepra, smallpox, and syphilis as hereditary; but it is incorrect and misleading to do so. When a person has syphilis, say, from the earliest existence—that is, from the fertilized ovum by transmission of a syphilitic microbe through the germ cells of the parents—this should be designated by its proper name as _congenital bacterial infection_. This is totally different from the hereditary qualities that flow from the structural equilibrium following the commingling and struggle for existence of multitudes of hereditary units.

The one set of hereditary qualities is _purely germinal_, while the other is germinal _profoundly modified by the presence of an infecting microbe_. Of course, to the extent that any toxines that are secreted by the bacteria may cause permanent structural changes in the germ-cells, to that extent may the germinal characteristics be transmitted and become hereditary.

Many instances of infection of the child _in utero_ have been reported in cases of endocarditis, scarlet fever, and smallpox; and there can no longer be any doubt, from experimental investigation and recent observation, that pneumococci, typhoid bacilli, anthrax bacilli, and pus cocci are able to pass to the fœtus through the placenta. But the diseases that develop in this way can be called hereditary with even less semblance of correctness than in the case of the fertilized ovum that is invaded with a microbe.

All of these cases are illustrations of pseudo-hereditary transmission, and should, for the sake of clearness and accuracy, be spoken of as _prenatal_ infections.

So far as the problems of heredity and variation are concerned, we may say that the life cycle begins and ends with the germ cell. Insects lay their eggs in old age; among plants the annuals flower but to die; in higher creatures the cessation of the procreative power often marks the beginning of bodily decline.

Bearing in mind that the human body consists of two great classes of cells, germ cells and somatic cells, the following scheme will be found very useful in discussing heredity with variation—viz.:

{ Stable { (Heredity) { Temperature. } { { Chemical } { { substances in } { { solution in the } Germ-Cell { { Blastogenetic { fluids that } { { { bathe the } { { { germ-cells, as } { { { food, drugs, } { Unstable { { poisons, etc. } { (Variation) { } Environment { { Habitat } { { Temperature } { { Climate } { { Air } { Somatogenetic { Food } { Soil } { Water } { “Use” } { “Disuse” }

Just in proportion as fertilized germ cells during the mitoses of ontogeny give origin, among the somatic cells, to other germ cells that are structurally, and therefore physiologically, like themselves, just to that extent do we have heredity; on the other hand, just to the degree that the new germ cells which are produced are unstable, to that degree also do we meet with variations.

ENVIRONMENT.

In zoölogy the environment of an organism means the sum-total of the conditions of life that surround and affect it, such as food, air, water, climate, etc.

We have already stated that as far as evolution is concerned the structures of fundamental importance in an organism are the Germ-Cells; therefore, for our purposes, we will define _environment to be the sum-total of the conditions that directly or indirectly influence in any way the germ-cells_, by which variations in them may be produced, or through which stability may be maintained.