INDUCTION. II/ 



few naturalists seem willing to grant them." 1 

 He reasoned that, if the gemmules or bearers of 

 inheritable qualities existed in such enormous 

 numbers in the body, they must be borne from 

 place to place and to the reproductive organs 

 by the blood. If this were true, then by inject- 

 ing blood from one variety of rabbit into the 

 blood-system of rabbits of another variety, the 

 gemmules introduced with the foreign blood 

 would pass with those proper to the animal 

 itself into the repVoductive elements, and 

 would modify the character of the offspring. 

 He foresaw the practical importance of such a 

 result. Slight dashes of blood could be intro- 

 duced by breeders to modify a variety; for 

 example, greyhounds could have a little of the 

 bull-dog instilled into them. At the end of 

 his investigation he said, " I have now made 

 experiments of transfusion and cross-circulation 

 on a large scale in rabbits, and have arrived 

 at definite results, negativing, in my opinion, 

 beyond all doubt, the truth of the doctrine of 

 Pangenesis." Thus ended the only effort ever 

 made to test the hypothesis deductively by 

 reasoning out its consequences and trying to 

 establish them by experiment. 



1 Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1871, Vol XIX. p. 394 

 et seq. 



