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result of this intoxication of the germs may be that the children resulting from their conjugation become idiots, epileptics, dwarfs or feeble minded. Thus it is not alcoholism or the craving for drink which is inherited. No doubt the peculiarity of badly supporting alcohol is inherited by ordinary heredity as a hereditary disposition, but it is not this which produces the alcoholic degenerations of the race. These are the result of the single blastophthoria. When, on the other hand, a man is found to be imbecile or epileptic as the result of the insobriety of his father, he preserves the tendency to transmit his mental weakness or his epilepsy to his descendants, even when he abstains completely from alcoholic drinks. In fact, the chromosomes of the spermatozoid, from which about a half of his organism has issued, have preserved the pathological derangement produced by the parental alcoholism in their hereditary mneme, and have transmitted it to the store of germinal cells of the feeble minded or the epileptic, who in his turn transmits it to his descendants. From _Weismann's_ point of view his hereditary determinants remain pathologically deviated. All intoxications which alter the protoplasm of the germinal cells may produce blastophthoric degenerations, which continue to menace several successive generations in the form of hereditary taints. Other deviations in the development of the germs may act in an analogous manner to blastophthoria. We have mentioned above the experiments of _Merrifield_ and _Standfuss_ on the caterpillars of certain butterflies. Without being really of a pathological nature, these actions of a physical agent on the hereditary energies resemble blastophthoria. Mechanical action on the embryo may also give rise to pathological products or even mutilation. Thus, _Weismann_ demonstrated the production of degenerate individuals in ants when certain coleoptera were introduced in their nest, the ants being fond of the secretion of the large glandular hairs of the coleoptera. The exact cause of the degeneration has not yet been found, but the fact is certain. In man, certain constitutional affections and congenital anomalies are the result of certain diseases in the procreators, which have affected the germinal cells or the embryo (for instance syphilis). As soon as the blastophthoric actions cease in the procreators, those of their descendants who live under a normal regimen have evidently a tend
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