Here the variations were stamped upon the germ-plasm, and the commingling of these variously stamped germ-plasms has resulted in all the variations of higher animals.
But how did these two germ-plasms come to be different?
Hence in the act of fertilization two germ-plasms of slightly different structure and tendency are mingled.
Environment modifies the bodily characters of the existing generation, but does not [often] modify the germ plasms from which the next generation springs.
At most, environment can provide a selection of which germplasms among the many provided shall be potential and which shall remain latent.
We have to consider how this reduction of the number of ancestral germ-plasms can further the kind of variation required.
By means of the second nuclear division, the excessive accumulation of different kinds of hereditary tendencies or germ-plasms is prevented.
In such a case the required reduction in the number of ancestral germ-plasms would take place, for each daughter-nucleus would receive only half the number which was contained in the mother-nucleus.
We know that the germ-plasm of each individual is not a simple substance, but possesses a very complex composition, for it consists of a number of ancestral germ-plasms represented in very different proportions.
I now come to inquire whether the expulsion of the second polar body is in reality, as I have already maintained, a reduction in the number of ancestral germ-plasms present in the nucleus of the egg.
We cannot unravel the details of the mysterious relationship between two parent germ-plasms, each of which is composed of a countless number of ancestral germ-plasms from the first and second back to the nth degree.
I was long ago convinced that sexual reproduction must be connected with a reduction in the number of ancestral germ-plasms to one half, and that such reduction was repeated in each generation.
The expulsion of the second polar body can only mean the removal of part of the germ-plasm itself, a removal by which the number of ancestral germ-plasms is reduced to one half.
And similarly, of course, as regards the different aggregations of ancestral germ-plasms which are left for distribution among these innumerable germ-cells.
We may look in vain, he says, for any individual differences on the part of any multicellular organisms, which have been brought into existence independently of the blending of germ-plasms in a previous act of sexual union.
If one group of ancestral germ-plasms is expelled from one egg, and a different group from another egg, it follows that no two eggs can be exactly alike as regards their contained hereditary tendencies.
As often as its stability has been upset, its “molecular structure” has been modified by causes ab extra, as distinguished from mixtures of germ-plasms in sexual unions.
Unless we are to have a mere juggling with words, we cannot put into our successive idio-plasms any particles of kinds differing from those which are contained in the original germ-plasm.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "plasms" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
