OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY 163 
an ese. » . . But the eggs being the envelope 
of every kind of germ, they preéxist in the indi- 
viduals which produce them, before fertilization has 
vivified them. The seeds of plants (which are vege- 
table eggs) actually exist in the ovaries of flowers 
before the fertilization of these ovaries.” * 
From whom did he get this idea that seeds or eggs 
are envelopes of all sorts of germs? It is not the 
“evolution” of a single germ, as, for example, an 
excessively minute but complete chick in the hen’s 
egg, in the sense held by Bonnet. Who it was he 
does not mention. He evidently, however, had the 
Swiss biologist in mind, who held that all living things 
proceed from preéxisting germs.t 
Whatever may have been his views as to the germs 
in the egg before fertilization, we take it that he be- 
lieved in the epigenetic development of the plant or 
animal after the seed or egg was once fertilized. ¢ 
Lamarck did not adopt the encasement theory of 
Swammerdam and of Heller. We find nothing in 
Lamarck’s writings opposed to epigenesis. The fol- 
lowing passage, which bears on this subject, is trans- 
lated from his W/émotres de Physique (p. 250), where 
* Mémotres de Physique, etc. (1797), p. 272. 
+ Huxley’s ‘‘ Evolution in Biology” (Darwiniana, p. 192), where 
he quotes from Bonnet’s statements, which ‘* bear no small resem- 
blance to what is understood by evolution at the present day.” 
t Buffon did not accept Bonnet’s theory of preéxistent germs, but 
he assumed the existence of ‘‘ germes accumulés” which reproduced 
parts or organs, and for the production of organisms he imagined 
‘* molécules organiqgues.”’ Réaumur had previously (1712) conjectured 
that there were ‘‘ vermes cachés et accumulés” to account for the re- 
generation of the limbs of the crayfish. The ideas of Bonnet on 
germs are stated in his Mémoires sur les Salamandres (1777-78-80) 
and in his Considérations sur les corps organisés (1762.) 
