1876 PANGENESIS 35 



nor have I any publication worth alluding to. I sup- 

 pose, however, this will not matter if I am proposed 

 by yourself. Dr. Hooker, and Mr. Dyer. I think there 

 would be no harm in saying ' attached to Physiology 

 and Zoology.' I may read a paper before the Linnean 

 next November on some new species of Medusae, but 

 I think it is better not to allude to any contributions 

 in advance. 



Your letter about Pangenesis made me long for 

 success more even than does the biological importance 

 of the problem.^ Yesterday I dug up all my potatoes. 

 Some of the produce looked suspicious, but more than 

 this I should not dare to say. By this post I send 

 you a box containing some of the best specimens, 

 thinking you may like to see them. The lots marked 

 A and B are sent for comparison with the others, 

 being the kinds I grafted together. If you think it 

 worth while to have the eyes of any of the other lots 

 planted, you might either do so yourself or send them 

 back to me. Lot C is the queerest, and to my perhaps 

 too partial eye looks very like a mixture. In the case 

 of this graft the seed potato was rotten when dug up 



' The experiments in graffc-hybridisation were to prove that formative 

 material (or gemmules) was actually present in the general tissues of 

 plants and was capable of uniting with the gemmules of another plant 

 and thus of reproducing the entire organism. For if the hybrid, afterwards 

 produced, presents equally the characters of the scion and the stock, 

 then formative material must have been present in the tissues of the 

 scion, and it is demonstrated that the somatic tissues of the scion have 

 exercised an effect on the germinal elements of the stock, inasmuch as it 

 has caused their offspring in part to resemble it. Such facts Komanes 

 considered to be fully in harmony with the theory of Pangenesis, and 

 inconsistent with any theory which supposes that no part of the parent 

 organism generates any of the formative material. 



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