SOME ASPECTS OF ZOOLOGY 35 



Buffon, Ch. Bonnet, Oken, Treviranus, Lamarck, only to 

 mention a few of them who devoted great learning and 

 research to the elucidation of these phenomena. But it 

 cannot be said that any of them got beyond the stage of 

 ingenious hypothesis, and it is to be remembered that Darwin 

 expressly called Pangenesis a provisional hypothesis. 



But, though it was unacceptable from the beginning, it 

 proved to be an astonishingly fertile hypothesis. It may 

 claim to have been the parent of the exact statistical researches 

 of Galton and the elaborate, highly technical and very in- 

 fluential theories of Weismann, and of de Vries' Intracellular 

 Pangenesis (1889), not to mention a host of hypotheses less 

 securely founded and now half forgotten. 



Quite independent of Darwin's work were the discoveries 

 of Gregor Mendel. He tells us himself that his experiments 

 were begun in the year 1857, the year before Darwin and 

 Wallace read their joint paper before the Linnean Society, and 

 two years before the publication of the Origin of Species. The 

 story of how Mendel's work escaped attention and lay practi- 

 cally unknown and forgotten till the year 1900 is now so 

 familiar that I need do no more than allude to it. The 

 wonder of it is, why did not the Abbot of Briinn send a separate 

 copy of his work to Darwin ? Had he done so, I do not doubt 

 that biological science, and I think the world, would have 

 taken a different course. The Abbot cannot altogether be 

 exonerated from the charge of theological prejudice. The 

 work of Darwin was familiar to him ; he is known to have 

 disagreed with Darwin's doctrine, and there seems to have 

 been some aversion to opening up communications. 



However this may be, and it is quite a non-essential point, 

 the great and intensive studies of Heredity and Variation that 

 have followed the rediscovery of Mendel's work have gone far 

 to modify some of the cruder conceptions founded on the 

 Darwinian theory. 



It is not my purpose to attempt to give you a sketch of or 

 to enter upon a critical examination of any of the theories of 

 the authors whose names I have mentioned. If it were, I 

 should have to ask you to listen to me for many hours, and 



