XCVUl PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



the conditions to which the parents have been exposed, but that the 

 amount and direction of variation by no means correspond with the 

 amount and nature of the changed conditions, but is regulated by a 

 variety of laws, of many of which very little is as yet known, but 

 of which some of those which are best evidenced are here brought 

 forward. The subject must necessarily be still further investigated 

 when variability of organic beings in a state of nature comes to be 

 considered in detail. 



A much more difficult subject than any others treated of in these 

 volumes is the proposed new hypothesis of Pangenesis ; but as this 

 question is of a somewhat speculative nature, I shall not presume 

 to offer you more than a few words of notice on the present occasion. 

 Certain facts in the history of organisms, in their reproduction, vari- 

 ability, inheritance, and reversion to long-lost characters, although 

 well authenticated, appeared quite anomalous and inexplicable under 

 the general laws of succession hitherto propounded. These facts Mr. 

 Darwin has endeavoured to connect by the supposition that the cells 

 or units composing the living body, besides the admitted propagation 

 by self-division or ijrolification, throw off during all stages of deve- 

 lopment minute granules or atoms which he calls gemmules which 

 circulate freely throughout the system, and when supphed with pro- 

 per nutriment — when united with other partially developed cells or 

 gemmules — become developed into cells like those from which they 

 are derived, — that they are transmitted from the parent to the off- 

 spring, and are usually developed in the generation which imme- 

 diately succeeds, but may be transmitted in a dormant state through 

 many generations, and then developed. This hypothesis startles us 

 at the outset, as entailing the supposition of an infinitesimal minute- 

 ness, number, and complexity beyond all powers of conception ; and 

 a first glance over the chapter seems to show but very few facts 

 upon which to found what Mr. Darwin himself characterizes as a 

 gratuitous assumption. But if, on a second reading, we take into 

 consideration how familiar mathematical signs make us' with num- 

 bers and combinations, the actual realization of which is beyond all 

 human capacity, how inconceivably minute must be the atoms even 

 of those emanations which most powerfully affect our sense of smell 

 or our constitutions ; and if, discarding all preventions, we follow Mr. 

 Darwin, step by step, in applying his suppositions to the facts laid 

 before us, we must, I think, admit with him that they may explain 

 some, and are not incompatible with others ; and it appears to me, 

 from the very few critical observations I have as yet met with, that 



