Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/788

cumulates; so that two, three, or more generations must be exposed to new conditions before any effect is visible," implies that during these generations there is going on some change of constitution consequent on the changed proportions and relations of the functions. I will not dwell on the implication, which seems tolerably clear, that this change must consist of such modifications of organs as adapt them to their changed functions; and that if the influence of changed conditions "accumulates," it must be through the inheritance of such modifications. Nor will I press the question—What is the nature of the effect registered in the reproductive elements, and which is subsequently manifested by variations?—Is it an effect entirely irrelevant to the new requirements of the variety?—Or is it an effect which makes the variety less fit for the new requirements?—Or is it an effect which makes it more fit for the new requirements? But not pressing these questions, it suffices to point out the necessary implication that changed functions of organs do, in some way or other, register themselves in changed proclivities of the reproductive elements. In face of these facts it cannot be denied that the modified action of a part produces an inheritable effect—be the nature of that effect what it may.

The second of the remarks above adverted to as made by Mr. Darwin, is contained in his sections dealing with correlated variations. In the Origin of Species, p. 114, he says:

"The whole organization is so tied together during its growth and development, that when slight variations in any one part occur, and are accumulated through natural selection, other parts become modified,"

And a parallel statement contained in Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii, p. 320, runs thus:

"Correlated variation is an important subject for us; for when one part is modified through continued selection, either by man or under nature, other parts of the organization will be unavoidably modified. From this correlation it apparently follows that, with our domesticated animals and plants, varieties rarely or never differ from each other by some single character alone."

By what process does a changed part modify other parts? By modifying their functions in some way or degree, seems the necessary answer. It is indeed, imaginable, that where the part changed is some dermal appendage which, becoming larger, has abstracted more of the needful material from the general stock, the effect may consist simply in diminishing the amount of this material available for other dermal appendages, leading to diminution of some or all of them, and may fail to affect in appreciable ways the rest of the organism: save perhaps the blood-vessels near the enlarged appendage. But where the part is an active one—a limb, or viscus, or any organ which constantly demands blood, produces waste matter, secretes, or absorbs—then all the other active organs become implicated in the change. The functions