B. T. L0WNE ON SO-CALLED SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 135 



bodies. Any one of those bodies, if placed under favourable condi- 

 tions, will produce a perfect plant, similar to its parent. You may 

 say that these bodies have inherited the potentiality to do so, but 

 this is not all, for every plant thus produced, in like manner de- 

 v elopes on its stalks and leaves myriads of similar bodies, endowed 

 with the same property of becoming new plants ; and so on, appar- 

 ently interminably. Therefore the original cell that left the grand 

 parent, not only carried with it this so called potentiality, but 

 multiplied it and distributed it with undiminished power through 

 the other cells of the plant produced by itself; and so on, for 

 countless generations. What is this potentiality, and how is this 

 power to reproduce thus propagated, so that an organism can, by 

 single cells, multiply itself so rapidly, and within very narrow 

 limits, so surely and so interminably ? Mr. Darwin suggests an 

 explanation, by assuming that each cell or fragment of a plant (or 

 animal) contains myriads of atoms or gemmules, each of which 

 gemmules he supposes to have been thrown off from the separate 

 cells of the mother-plant, the gemmules having the power of mul- 

 tiplication, and of circulating throughout the plant : their future 

 development he supposes to depend on their affinity for other par- 

 tially developed cells in due order of succession. Gemmules which 

 do not become developed, may, according to his hypothesis, be 

 transmitted through many succeeding generations, thus enabling 

 us to understand many remarkable cases of reversion or atavism. 

 Hence, the normal organs of the body have not only the represen- 

 tative elements of which they consist diffused through all the other 

 parts of the body, but the morbid states of these, as hereditary 

 diseases, malformations, &c, all actually circulate in the body as 

 morbid gemmules. 



u As with other hypotheses based on the assumed existence of 

 structures and elements that escape our senses, by reason of their 

 minuteness or subtlety, this of Pangenesis will approve itself to 

 some minds and not to others. To some these inconceivably minute 

 circulating gemmules will be as apparent to the mind's eye as the 

 stars of which the milky way is composed : others will prefer em- 

 bodying the idea in such a term as potentiality, a term which con- 

 veys no definite impression whatever, and they will like it none the 

 less on this account. 



" Whatever be the scientific value of these gemmules, there is no 

 question but that to Mr. Darwin's enunciation of the doctrine of 



