Pangenesis: Graft-Hybrids

Abstract

EACH person who assails this unfortunate “provisional hypo thesis” makes the attack from his own particular point of view. Thus, in NATURE of last week Prof. L. S. Beale, as a microscopist, objects to it because the gemmules cannot be made evident to the senses. From this somewhat narrow view of the case the atomic theory of chemistry, the undulatory theory of light, or the mechanical theory of heat, must all break down, for no one has as yet seen an ultimate atom, or an ethereal undulation. Mr. A. C. Ranyard, in the same paper, publishes a letter which is quite at variance with fact, for if he will turn to pp. 390, 391, 394, 397 in vol. i. and pp. 364 and 365 vol. ii. of Mr. Darwin's work on “The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,” he will there find many cases given of the scion affecting the stock and producing intermediate forms known as “graft-hybrids.” Pangenesis has not yet “received its death blow.”