OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY 163 



an egg. . . . But the eggs being the envelope 

 of every kind of germ, they preexist in the indi- 

 viduals which produce them, before fertilization has 

 vivified them. The seeds of plants (which are vege- 

 table eggs) actually exist in the ovaries of flowers 

 before the fertilization of these ovaries." * 



From whom did he get this idea that seeds or eggs 

 are envelopes of all sorts of germs ? It is not the 

 " evolution " of a single germ, as, for example, an 

 excessively minute but complete chick in the hen's 

 egg, in the sense held by Bonnet. Who it was he 

 does not mention. He evidently, however, had the 

 Swiss biologist in mind, who held that all living things 

 proceed from preexisting germs.f 



Whatever may have been his views as to the germs 

 in the egg before fertilization, we take it that he be- 

 lieved in the epigenetic development of the plant or 

 animal after the seed or egg was once fertilized. % 



Lamarck did not adopt the encasement theory of 

 Swammerdam and of Heller. We find nothing in 

 Lamarck's writings opposed to epigenesis. The fol- 

 lowing passage, which bears on this subject, is trans- 

 lated from his Mdmoires de Physique (p. 250), where 



* Mdmoires de Physique, etc. (1797), p. 272. 



f Huxley's " Evolution in Biology" (Darwiniana, p. 192), where 

 he quotes from Bonnet's statements, which " bear no small resem- 

 blance to what is understood by evolution at the present day." 



X Buffon did not accept Bonnet's theory of preexistent germs, but 

 he assumed the existence ol^'germes accumuUs" which reproduced 

 parts or organs, and for the production of organisms he imagined 

 " moUcules organiques." Reaumur had previously (17 12) conjectured 

 that there were ^^ germ.es cacMs et accumuUs" to account for the re- 

 generation of the limbs of the crayfish. The ideas of Bonnet on 

 germs are stated in his Mdmoires sur les Salamandres (1777-78-80) 

 and in his Considerations sur les corps organises (1762.) 



