ABSTRACT
Hereditivity is the power of transmission, the capability of organisms to transfer their peculiarities to their descendants by propagation. By natural selection we understand the interaction which takes place in the struggle for life between the transmission by inheritance and the mutability of organisms, and which may be traced to other processes of life— the functions of propagation and nutrition. Transmission by Inheritance or Inheritance simply, on the other hand, denotes the exercise of the capability, the actual transmission. Every organism, every living individual, owes its existence either to an act of unparental or Spontaneous Generation, or to an act of Parental Generation or Propagation. The formation of germ-buds is evidently but little different from real budding. But it is connected with a fourth kind of non-sexual propagation, which almost forms a transition to sexual reproduction, namely, the formation of germ-cells, which is often briefly called formation of spores.
