1868. | Darwin and Pangenesis. 305 
of infusoria, even, would have remained still in the conception of 
the Maker. 
Now what perplexes us is, how in this humble form the sur- 
rounding conditions of external nature can operate to bring about a 
“tendency to vary.” To say that we are unable to understand this, 
and the less therefore we say about it the better—as the author 
occasionally does when he comes to a dead-lock in some mystery of 
nature—is taking refuge behind even less defensible breastworks 
than those of his opponents; for they have at least a Divine force 
and Will to appeal to on all such occasions. The author says, at 
the conclusion of his chapter on “ pangenesis:’—“ Finally, the 
power of propagation possessed by each separate cell, using the 
term in its largest sense, determines the reproduction, the varia- 
bility, the development, and renovation of each living organism.” 
(But, we would ask parenthetically, how does that cell itself begin 
to vary?) “No other attempt has been made, imperfect as this 
confessedly is, to connect. under one point of view these several 
grand classes of facts. We cannot fathom the marvellous com- 
plexity of an organic being; but, on the hypothesis here advanced, 
this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be 
looked at as a microcosm—a little universe formed of a host of 
self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute, and as numerous 
as the stars in the heaven.” 
In regard to the latter portion of this paragraph, we cordially 
award to the able author .the credit of having exhibited and 
illustrated the theory of cell-life, in a manner so novel and interesting 
as to take it out of the mere province of speculation, and to present 
it as one well deserving of the earnest consideration of biologists. 
The application of its principles to the phenomena of the hereditary 
transmission of peculiarities, whether they be normal or abnormal, 
such as the inheritance of peculiar features or of special diseases, 
opens out a wide field for research, and ere long the physical aspect 
of many of those phenomena may be made clear; but when he 
treats living “ gemmules” as he would atoms of inorganic matter 
which go to form crystals, and seeks to clear up the difficulties 
accompanying the first tendency to vary by resorting to this 
almost unconsidered theory to account for the defects in his own 
well-founded hypothesis, we have an exhibition of weakness rather 
than an addition of strength. 
Just let us examine one or two of his examples of the 
operation of pangenesis. 
The author finds that when animals are suddenly brought 
under domestication, they are for a time infertile, and, as it has 
already been shown, this infertility is compared with that which 
gradually supervenes as varieties become more divergent in Nature. 
Now, it 1s quite possible that in both these cases the number of 
