To Asa Gray, May 8th [1868].
“Your article in the Nation [March 19th] seems to me very good, and you give an excellent idea of Pangenesis—an infant cherished by few as yet, except his tender parent, but which will live a long life. There is parental presumption for you!”
To E. Ray Lankester, March 15th [1870].
“I was pleased to see you refer[L] to my much despised child, ‘Pangenesis,’ who I think will some day, under some better nurse, turn out a fine stripling.”
To Wallace, August 28th, 1872.
“Notwithstanding all his [Dr. Bastian’s] sneers I do not strike my colours as yet about Pangenesis.”
In the second edition of “Animals and Plants,” Beale’s criticism of the hypothesis is alluded to with characteristic candour and humour:—“Dr. Lionel Beale (Nature, May 11th, 1871, p. 26) sneers at the whole doctrine with much acerbity and some justice.” Galton’s paper before the Royal Society (March 30th, 1871), upon the results of inter-transfusion of blood as destructive of pangenesis, was answered by Darwin in Nature (April 27th, 1871). He did “not allow that pangenesis has as yet received its death-blow, though from presenting so many vulnerable points its life is always in jeopardy.”
Galton had argued that the gemmules present in the blood of one individual would be expected to pass into the other individual and to produce hereditary effects on its offspring. This, however, did not occur. Romanes repeated these experiments under more rigid conditions, but with the same negative results; equally negative were the effects of his transplantation of skin from one animal to another, although the skin grew quite successfully in its new position.