[page] 374

The doctrine of "Pangenesis," reproduced in Mr. Darwin's work on "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," has lately attracted much attention in scientific circles. This doctrine, which is a modification of Reaumur's and Bonnet's Panspermy, was in some points maintained by Buffon, and was laughed at by the wits of the last century, as involving the supposition that a parent with a wooden leg must have offspring similarly constituted. Mr. Darwin supposes that the tissues of plants and animals are capable of throwing off atoms or seeds which reproduce the original tissue, and that these atoms accumulate in the ova and reproduce a copy of the parent. But that sometimes a disturbing force calls into activity the molecules of remote ancestors, which have lain dormant, and thus produces reversion. Probably these atoms differ from one another only in having different modes of motion, and the motion will always act in the line of least resistance. Plants and animals, according to this supposition, assume different forms merely because their expansion into these forms involves the least resistance possible; and crystallization is also determined by a similar equipoise of forces.