DARWIN S THEORY OF PANGENESIS. 105 



What are some of the replies to be made to Dar- 

 win's hypothesis of pangenesis? 



1. The hypothetical gemmules may pass every- 

 where through the tissues of living organisms. They 

 are inconceivably small. 



Charles Darwin calls Lionel Beale " a great author- 

 ity." (Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. 

 ii. p. 372.) I fear some Darwinians who read Beale 

 are not candid enough to agree with their master in 

 that opinion. But when Darwin cites Beale he is so 

 frank as to say that this theory of pangenesis has 

 been opposed most emphatically by Lionel Beale, and 

 by Mivart, and by Professor Delphino of Florence, 

 whose suggestions Darwin says he found very useful. 

 This great authority, Lionel Beale, of whom we have 

 heard here before to-day, admits that there may be 

 masses of bioplasm too small to be seen with the 

 highest powers of our present microscopes. The 

 gemmules, however, on the theory of pangenesis, 

 must be almost inconceivably smaller than those as- 

 sumed particles of bioplasm, for every such particle 

 in every stage of growth must throw off a gemmule ; 

 and these gemmules from all the Lioplasmic points of 

 the body must be collected in a little shifting dust 

 which we call the pollen of a plant. In your palm 

 and your oak there are millions of bioplasmic points; 

 but, according to Darwin's theory, every unit, that is 

 every cell, every bioplasmic point, in every stage of 

 its growth, must throw off gemmules, and these must 

 be collected together in the pollen. The gemmules 

 must be inconceivably small, to be contained in so 



