THE PROVISIONAL HYPOTHESIS OF PANGENESIS. 301 



believe was possessed by an early progenitor of the species, 

 but of which not even a rudiment is left, suddenly reap- 

 pears, as with the fifth stamen in some Scrophulariacece. 



a In every living creature we may feel as- 



sured that a host of long-lost characters lie 

 ready to be evolved under proper conditions. How can 

 we make intelligible, and connect with other facts, this 

 wonderful and common capacity of reversion — this power 

 of calling back to life long-lost characters ? 



p Imperfect nails sometimes appear on the 



stumps of the amputated fingers of man ; and 

 it is an interesting fact that with the snake-like saurians, 

 which present a series with more and more imperfect 

 limbs, the terminations of the phalanges first disappear, 

 " the nails becoming transferred to their proximal rem- 

 nants, or even to parts which are not phalanges." 



„ ODlT Mr. Salter and Dr. Maxwell Masters have 



Page 387. 



found pollen within the ovules of the passion- 

 flower and of the rose. Buds may be developed in the 

 most unnatural positions, as on the petal of a flower. 

 Numerous analogous facts could be given. 



I do not know how physiologists look at such facts as 

 the foregoing. According to the doctrine of pangenesis, 

 the gemmules of the transposed organs become developed 

 in the wrong place, from uniting with wrong cells or 

 aggregates of cells during their nascent state ; and this 

 would follow from a slight modification in their elective 

 affinities. 



Po On any ordinary view it is unintelligible 



how changed conditions, whether acting on 



the embryo, the young or the adult, can cause inherited 



