46 AMONG THE GREEKS. 



of Epigenesis in embryonic development ; he fully 

 perceived the forces of hereditary transmission, 

 of the prepotency of one parent oi stock, and of 

 Atavism or Reversion ; he also perceived the ' com- 

 pensation of growth ' principle as shown in a pas- 

 sage of his upon the origin of horns : " Having 

 now explained the purpose of horns, it remains 

 to see the necessity of matter, by which Nature 

 gave horns to animals ; we see that Nature taking 

 away matter from the front teeth (alluding to the 

 ruminants) has added it to the horns." He saw 

 the fundamental difference between animals and 

 plants, and distinguished the organic or living 

 world from the inorganic or lifeless world. 



In his treatise upon the Generation of Animals 

 (I. Sec. 35) we find him -discussing the Heredity 

 theories of Hippocrates and Heraclitus, which were 

 similar to those of Democritus, and to the later 

 Pangenesis of Darwin. He says : — 



" Children resemble their parents not only in congenital char- 

 acters, but in those acquired later in life. For cases are known 

 where parents have been marked by scars, and children have 

 shown traces of these scars at the same points ; a case is also 

 reported from Chalcedon in which a father had been branded \vith 

 a letter, and the same letter somewhat blurred and not sharply 

 defined appeared upon the arm of his child." 



Aristotle, however, does not accept the Pan- 

 genesis hypothesis of Heredity, nor does he suggest 

 the inheritance of normal functional modifications. 

 In his History of Animals he again refers to the 



