Chap. XXVII. OF PANGENESIS. 379 



ceivable. I shall hereafter recur to this objection, which at 

 first appears so formidable ; but it may here be remarked that 

 a cod-fish has been found to produce 6,867,840 eggs, a single 

 Ascaris about 64,000,000 eggs, and a single Orchidaceous plant 

 probably as many million seeds. 34 In these several cases, the 

 spermatozoa and pollen-grains must exist in considerably larger 

 numbers. Now, when we have to deal with numbers such as 

 these, which the human intellect cannot grasp, there is no 

 good reason for rejecting our present hypothesis on account of 

 the assumed existence of cell-gemmules a few thousand times 

 more numerous. 



The gemmules in each organism must be thoroughly diffused ; 

 nor does this seem improbable considering their minuteness and 

 the steady circulation of fluids throughout the body. So it 

 must be with the gemmules of plants, for with certain kinds 

 even a minute fragment of a leaf will reproduce the whole. 

 But a difficulty here occurs ; it would appear that with plants, 

 and probably with compound animals, such as corals, the gem- 

 mules do not spread from bud to bud, but only through the 

 tissues developed from each separate bud. We are led to this 

 conclusion from the stock being rarely affected by the insertion 

 of a bud or graft from a distinct variety. This non-diffusion of 

 the gemmules is still more plainly shown in the case of ferns ; 

 for Mr. Bridgman 35 has proved that, when spores (which it 

 should be remembered are of the nature of buds) are taken from 

 a monstrous part of a frond, and others from an ordinary part, 



34 Mr. F. Buckland carefully calcu- genus, Gongora, Mr. Scott lias seen 

 lated, by weighing, the above number of twenty capsules produced on a sino-le 

 eggs ma cod-fish; see 'Land and Water,' raceme: ten such racemes on the 

 1868, p 62. In a previous instance Acropera would yield above seventy- 

 he found the number to be 4,872,000. four millions of seed. I may add that 

 Harmer ( Phil. Transact.,' 1767, p. 280) Fritz Miiller informs me that he found 

 found only 3,681,760 eggs. For the in a capsule of a Maxillaria, in South 

 Ascaris, see Carpenter's 'Comp.Phys,' Brazil, that the seed weighed m 

 1801 p 5J0 ; Mr. J. Scott, of the grains : he then arranged half a grain 

 Boyal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh, of seed in a narrow line, and by count- 

 calculated, m the same manner as ing a measured length found the number 



Iv^-v T fOT fT Bl " itish 01 ' cms in the half-grain to be 20,667, so that 

 ( Fertilisation of Orchids,' p. 344), in the capsule there must have been 

 the number of seeds m a capsule of 1,756,440 seeds ! The same plant some- 



+ a \ ZToTn r ST*, th6 OTmber times P ro <^s half-a-dozen capsules, 

 to be 371,250. Now this plant produces as , Annalg and M of -^ ^ , 



several flowers on a raceme and many 3rd series, vol. viii., 1861, p. 490. 

 racemes during a season. In an allied 



