These essays by the German zoologist August Weismann, translated by Poulton, Schönland and Shipley, move from the question of why animals live as long as they do to the nature of heredity, life and death, and sexual reproduction. At their centre is his theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm, which denied that characteristics acquired in a lifetime are passed on.
A key work in the history of biology, read by anyone tracing the road from Darwin to modern genetics. Download the free EPUB.