The best-authenticated cases of the influence of the male on the tissues
of the female are those in plants, where one species, or variety, is
fertilized by another. Thus, if the orange is fertilized by the pollen
of the lemon, the fruit may have the color and flavor of the lemon. Now
the fruit is a product of the tissues of the ovary of the female, and
not a part of the seedling that develops in the fruit from the
cross-fertilized egg-cell. Analogous cases are recorded for the bean,
whose pods may have their color influenced by fertilizing the flower
with pollen of another variety having pods of a different color. In
these cases we do not know whether the color of the fruit is influenced
directly by the foreign pollen, or whether the influence is through the
embryo that develops from the egg-cell. The action may appear to be the
same, however, in either case; but because it seems probable here that
there is some sort of influence of one tissue on another, let us not too
readily conclude that this is brought about through any such imaginary
bodies as gemmules. It may be directly caused, for instance, by some
chemical substance produced in the young hybrid plant. If this is the
case, the result would not be different in kind from that of certain
flowers whose color may be influenced by certain chemical substances in
the soil.
In the cases amongst animals, where the maternal tissues are believed to
be influenced by a previous union with the male, as in the oft-cited
case of Lord Morton’s mare, a reëxamination of the evidence by Ewart has
shown that the case is not demonstrated, and not even probable. Several
years ago I tried to test this view in the case of mice. A white mouse
was first bred to a dark male house-mouse, and the next time to a white
mouse, but none of the offspring from the second union showed any trace
of black. If the spermatozoa of the dark mouse are hypodermically
injected into the body-cavity of the female, the subsequent young from a
white male show no evidence that the male cells have had any influence
on the ovary.
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