One of the most complicated and perplexing problems in the biology of to-day is the question of the origin of these variations. It is quite as hard to understand as is the method by which animals produce their own kind. No problem is being more earnestly studied. Suppositions we have in considerable number, and two of these at least may reasonably be mentioned. We will consider first the less certain theory. There is nothing in the egg that in the remotest degree resembles its parent. The old idea that every acorn had in it a miniature oak which only needed to unfold itself, or that the hen's egg had within it a miniature chick which only needed the warming process in order to make it evident, could not possibly survive the invention of the microscope. We may not, and we certainly do not, know everything that is in one of these eggs, but we do know most certainly that what is there has no resemblance to what it will be in time. The biologist finds in the nucleus or central core of every growing and reproducing cell certain minute bodies which Weissmann believes do much to determine the growth of the rest of the cell. He believes also that there are many more such "determinants" than are necessary for the reproduction of the cell. Each of these determinants may be fitted to produce slightly different results, but what decides which of them shall have its own way is quite uncertain. It may be that one determinant happens to be more favorably placed than others in the cell and that it has consequently secured more of the nourishment that comes to the cell in the blood of its parent. If this is true it would certainly be favored in the competition. We are becoming quite certain that whatever variations arise really start in the egg. The simplest conception as to the cause of variation would seem to be varied experience. One man trains his brain, another his hand; and in each case the organ so trained develops. But science is strongly of the mind that such influence does not reach the next generation. A musician may have taught his fingers to be nimble; may have given them speed of motion and precision in their action. No child of his born after he acquired this wonderful facility of execution is any more likely to be a skilled musician than a child born before he had ever practiced enough to be anything more than a crude performer. Science is nearly certain that his children are just as likely to be talented along musical lines if he himself never had become a musician, simply because he had it in him to be a musician. In other words, they may inherit the talent which he developed, but they inherited it not because he developed it, but because it was in him to be developed. This is in accordance with the famous principle that there is no inheritance of acquired characters. We shall touch this question a little more fully in a later chapter, in speaking of the development of the evolution theory since Darwin's time.