The only other experimental results, where animals are concerned, which seemed to tell on the side of Lamarckianism, are those of Mr. Cunningham, already alluded to. But, as the research is still in progress, the school of Weismann may fairly say that it would be premature to discuss its theoretical bearings. * * * * * Passing now from experiments on animals to experiments on plants, I must again ask it to be borne in mind, that here also no researches have been published, which have had for their object the testing of the question on which we are engaged. As in the case of animals, therefore, so in that of plants, we are dependent for any experimental results bearing upon the subject to such as have been gained incidentally during the course of investigations in quite other directions. Allusion has already been made, in my previous essay, to De Vries' observations on the chromatophores of algae passing from the ovum of the mother to the daughter organism; and we have seen that even Weismann admits, "It appears possible that a transmission of somatogenetic variation has here occurred[71]." It will now be my object to show that such variations appear to be sometimes transmitted in the case of higher plants, and this under circumstances which carry much less equivocal evidence of the inheritance of acquired characters, than can be rendered by the much more simple organization of an alga. [71] _Examination of Weismannism_, p. 83. I have previously mentioned Hoffmann's experiments on transplantation, the result of which was to show that variations, directly induced by changed conditions of life, were reproduced by seed[72]. Weismann, however, as we have seen, questions the _somatogenetic_ origin of these variations--attributing the facts to a _blastogenetic_ change produced in the plants by a direct action of the changed conditions upon the germ-plasm itself[73]. And he points out that whether he is right or wrong in this interpretation can only be settled by ascertaining whether the observable somatic changes occur in the generation which is first exposed to the changed conditions of life. If they do occur in the first generation, they are somatogenetic changes, which afterwards react on the substance of heredity, so as to transmit the acquired peculiarities to progeny. But if they do not occur till the second (or any later) generation, they are presumably blastogenetic. Unfortunately Hoffmann does not appear to have attended to this point with sufficient care, but there are other experiments of the same kind where the point has been specially observed. [72] _Examination of Wiesmannism_, p. 93. [73] _Ibid._ p. 153.