502 
NATURE 
[April 27, 1871 


things that came out of that Commission’s report? This, 
namely, that most of the teachers of Science in the 
Army Schools received notice to quit. England, on the 
high authority of Lord Northbrook, did not want a Scien- 
tific Army. 
All this by the way. We have referred to these in- 
stances, in order to show that the various departments 
of the Administration want scientific control here as is 
in France—that M. Deville’s suggestion is of value here 
as there, 
Now, assuming that the suggestion is a vital one, or 
even that it is an important one, and that it is good 
for England as for France, and we shall gladly open our 
columns to a discussion on these points ; the question 
arises—is it possible to adopt it here ? 
We are met at once by the different conditions of the 
French Academy of Sciences, and our own Royal Society. 
The Academy is a large paid body ; our Royal Society 
is a small unpaid body, and the work, which M. Deville 
considers so necessary for the regeneration of France, 
and which many consider necessary for the salvation of 
this country, is no temporary or small affair. The labour 
would be great, enormously great at first, and, moreover. 
would bea never endingone. To impose such alabouras 
this on a private body, which was constituted for entirely 
different purposes, would simply be to destroy that private 
body altogether, and it would be both unwise and unjust 
for such a body to undertake it, unless each member had 
ample means and no occupation. so that all his time and 
energy might be devoted to the task. 
We think, then, that for these and for other reasons, 
not far to seek, it is impossible for our Royal Society to 
play permanently the 7é/e here which M. Deville has sug- 
gested to the Paris Academy. 
But here, at length, is a grain of comfort. We have 
in England, at the present moment, a body at work, which 
if the general ideas of the power entrusted to it be correct, 
may perform those very services for England which M. 
Deville so loudly calls for—a call which all men of science 
@outre manche re-echo—in the case of France. We 
refer to the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction 
and the Advancement of Science, on which body, we 
take it, has devolved just such a general overhauling 
of all matters scientific within these realms as M. Deville 
has proposed—a herculean task, but a noble one 
if done well, and a task which will not be well done 
unless it is indicated how England can be put in a position 
second to no other nation so far as Science is concerned, 
a position that she certainly does not occupy at present. 
But supposing all this done, we must have something 
more. We must have some permanent machinery, and 
having this we must have the scientific men mindful, above 
all other things, of the interests of science, and then our 
politicians will hear no uncertain sound as to the merits or 
demerits of State aid to the higher education, A nation, 
as a distinguished foreign savan has recently said, must 
endow science until that nation stands first (1) in ab- 
stract Science, (2) in the applications of Science 
generally, and (3) in the amount of knowledge possessed 
by State servants of all classes. When she has achieved 
this point the question of continuing State aid may pro- 
perly be discussed—not till then. To this let us add that 
apart from the question of State-aided Science that nation 
will stand highest which, in addition to the above condi- 

tions, calls into her councils her men of Science, and 
becomes a Science-aided State, EDITOR 

PANGENESTS 
N a paper, read March 30, 1871, before the Royal 
Society, and just published in the Proceedings, Mr. 
Galton gives the results of his interesting experiments on 
the inter-transfusion of the blood of distinct varieties of 
rabbits. These experiments were undertaken to test 
whether there was any truth in my provisional hypothesis 
of Pangenesis. Mr, Galton, in recapitulating “the 
cardinal points,” says that the gemmules are supposed 
“ to swarm in the blood.” He enlarges on this head, and 
remarks, “ Under Mr. Darwin’s theory, the gemmules 
in each individual must, therefore, be looked upon as 
entozoa of his blood,” &c. Now, in the chapter on Pan- 
genesis in my “ Variation of Animals and Plants under 
Domestication,” I have not said one word about the blood, 
or about any fluid proper to any circulating system. It 
is, indeed, obvious that the presence of gemmules 
in the blood can form no necessary part of my 
hypothesis ; for I refer in illustration of it to the lowest 
animals, such as the Protozoa, which do not possess blood 
or any vessels ; and I refer to plants in which the fluid, 
when present in the vessels, cannot be considered as true 
blood. The fundamental laws of growth, reproduction, 
inheritance, &c., are so closely similar throughout the 
whole organic kingdom, that the means by which the 
gemmules (assuming for the moment their existence) are 
diffused through the body, would probably be the same in 
all beings ; therefore the means can hardly be diffusion 
through the blood. Nevertheless, when I first heard of 
Mr. Galton’s experiments, I did not sufficiently reflect on 
the subject, and saw not the difficulty of believing in 
the presence of gemmules in the blood. I have said 
(Variation, &c., vol. ii., p. 379) that “the gemmules in each 
organism must be thoroughly diffused ; nor does this seem 
improbable, considering their minuteness, and the 
steady circulation of fluids throughout the body.” 
But when I used these latter words and other similar 
ones, I presume that I was thinking of the diffusion of 
the gemmules through the tissues, or from cell to cell, 
independently of the presence of vessels,—as in the re- 
markable experiments by Dr. Bence Jones, in which 
chemical elements absorbed by the stomach were detected 
in the course of some minutes in the crystalline lens of 
the eye; or again as in the repeated loss of colour and 
its recovery after a few days by the hair, in the singular 
case of a neuralgic lady recorded by Mr. Paget. Nor 
can it be objected that the gemmules could not pass 
through tissues or cell-walls, for the contents of each 
pollen-grain have to pass through the coats, both of the 
pollen-tube and embryonic sack. I may add, with respect 
to the passage of fluids through membrane, that they pass 
from cell to cell in the absorbing hairs of the roots of 
living plants at a rate, as I have myself observed under 
the microscope, which is truly surprising. 
When, therefore, Mr. Galton concludes from the fact 
that rabbits of one variety, with a large proportion of the 
blood of another variety in their veins, do not produce 
mongrelised offspring, that the hypothesis of Pangenesis 
is false, it seems to me that his conclusion is a little hasty, 
His words are, “I have now made experiments of trans- 
