422 MY LIFE 



peculiarities which have been favourable to the increase and 

 maintenance of the particular race. I should infer, therefore, 

 that the brown or red was the original colour of man, and 

 that it maintains itself throughout all climates in America 

 because accidental deviations from it have not been accom- 

 panied by any useful constitutional peculiarities. It is Bates's 

 opinion that the Indians are recent immigrants into the 

 tropical plains of South America, and are not yet fully 

 acclimatized." 



In the following year, when I was living at Hurstpierpoint, 

 in a letter I wrote to Sir Charles, thanking him for the 

 trouble he had taken in regard to the Bethnal Green Museum, 

 I added some remarks on Darwin's new theory of " Pan- 

 genesis," which I will quote, because the disproof of it, which 

 I thoughf would not be given, was not long in coming, and, 

 with the more satisfactory theory of Weismann, led me 

 entirely to change my opinion. I wrote (February 20, 1868) : 

 "I am reading Darwin's book ('Animals and Plants under 

 Domestication'), and have read the 'Pangenesis' chapter 

 first, for I could not wait. The hypothesis is sublime in its 

 simplicity and the wonderful manner in which it explains the 

 most mysterious of the phenomena of life. To me it is 

 satisfying in the extreme. I feel I can never give it up, 

 unless it be positively disproved, which is impossible, or 

 replaced by one which better explains the facts, which is 

 highly improbable. Darwin has here decidedly gone ahead 

 of Spencer in generalization. I consider it the most won- 

 derful thing he has given us, but it will not be generally 

 appreciated." 



This was written when I was fresh from the spell of this 

 most ingenious hypothesis. Galton's experiments on blood 

 transfusion with rabbits first staggered me, as it seemed to 

 me to be the very disproof I had thought impossible. And 

 later on, when Weismann adduced his views on the continuity 

 of the germ-plasm, and the consequent non-heredity of 

 acquired characters ; and further, when he showed that the 

 supposed transmission of such characters, which Darwin had 

 accepted and which the hypothesis of pangenesis was con- 



