Inheritance of Acguired Characters 234 
Darwin attributes partly to natural selection and partly 
to use. 
These references will suffice to show that Darwin is in full 
accord with the main argument of Lamarck. In fact, the 
curious hypothesis of pangenesis that Darwin advanced was 
invented partly to account for the inheritance of acquired 
characters. Despite the hesitancy that Darwin himself felt 
in advancing this view, and contrary to Huxley’s advice, he 
at last published his provisional hypothesis of pangenesis in 
the twenty-seventh chapter of his “ Animals and Plants 
under Domestication.” 
Darwin’s HyYPoTHESIS OF PANGENESIS 
The study of bud variation, of the various forms of inheri- 
tance, and of reproduction and of the causes of variation, led 
him, Darwin says, to the belief that these subjects stand in 
some sort of relation to each other. He says: ‘I have been 
led, or rather forced, to form a view which to a certain extent 
connects these facts by a tangible method. Every one would 
wish to explain to himself, even in an imperfect manner, how 
it is possible for a character possessed by some remote 
ancestor suddenly to reappear in the offspring; how the 
effects of increased or decreased use of a limb can be trans- 
mitted to the child; how the male sexual element can act not 
solely on the ovules, but occasionally on the mother form; 
how a hybrid can be produced by the union of the cellular 
tissue of two plants independently of the organs of genera- 
tion; how a limb can be reproduced on the exact line of 
amputation, with neither too much nor too little added; how 
the same organism may be produced by such widely different 
processes, as budding and true seminal generation; and, 
lastly, how of two allied forms, one passes in the course of 
its development through the most complex metamorphoses, 
and the other does not do so, though when mature both are 
