Heredity / by J. Arthur Thomson.
- Thomson, J. Arthur (John Arthur), Sir, 1861-1933.
- Date:
- 1908
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Heredity / by J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
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![heredity as statisticians are, indeed more so; statistical results are based on individual data, but they do not admit of individual application.] Living matter has the special property of adding to its bulk by taking up the chemical elements which it requires and building up the food so taken as additional living matter. It furtlier has the power of separating from itself minute particles or germs which feed and grow independently and thus multiply their kind. It is a fundamental character of this process of reproduction that the detached or pullulated germ inherits or carries with it from its parents the peculiarities of form and structure of its parent. This is the property known as Heredity. It is most essentially modified by another property—namely, that though eventually growing to be closely like the parent, the germ (especially when it is formed, as is usual, by the fusion of two germs from two separate parents) is never identical in all respects with the parent. It shows Variation. In virtue of Heredity, the new congenital variations shown by a new generation are transmitted to their offspring when in due time they pullulate or produce germs.—E. Ray Lankester, Kingdom of Man, 1907, p. 10. By inheritance we mean those methods and processes by which the constitution and characteristics of an animal or plant are handed on to its offspring, this transmission of characters being, of course, associated with the fact that the offspring is developed by the processes of growth out of a small fragment detached from the parent organism.—R. H. Lock, Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, Heredity, and Evolution, 1906, p. i. Heredity.—The transference of similar characters from one generation of organisms to another, a process effected by means of the germ-cells or gametes.—Lock, o/>. cit. p. 292. § 5. The Problems Illustrated Even in ancient times men pondered over the resemblances and differences between children and their parents, and wondered as to the nature of the bond which links generation to generation. But although the problems are old, the precise study of them is altogether modern. The foundations of embryology had to be laid, the nature and origin of the physical basis of inheritance](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2129589x_0036.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
