THE CELL IN RELATION TO HERED- 

 ITY AND EVOLUTION 



BY 

 EDMUND B. WILSON 



I TRUST that my colleagues in this symposium 

 will not suspect me of any intention disrespectful 

 to them if I speak of my own small contribution 

 to it as the voice of one crying in the wilderness. 

 I do not mean to imply by the Scriptural phrase 

 that the cytologist has to announce the coming of 

 a new gospel of heredity or of evolution. He is, 

 to say the least, as much in need of light as are 

 others. I wish only to suggest the somewhat iso- 

 lated position of the subject assigned to me, deal- 

 ing, as it mainly must, with matters with which 

 Darwin's own work was not very directly con- 

 cerned, and which in their detailed aspects belong 

 mainly to the post-Darwinian period. With the 

 notable exception of the provisional hypothesis 

 of pangenesis Darwin made no systematic at- 

 tempt to correlate his own conclusions with those 

 towards which cell-research was already tending 

 in his day ; and pangenesis was rather a specula- 

 tive construction than an induction from known 

 cytological facts. Nevertheless my intrusion 

 into this circle may perhaps be justified on two 

 grounds. One is the keen interest in the inter- 



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