Charles Darwin by Janet Browne

Author:Janet Browne [Browne, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79368-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Despite his initial joy, Galton ultimately discovered that such colour variations were common in rabbits. Not a single instance of induced variation occurred in a total of eighty-eight offspring from transfused parents. The gemmules did not work in the way that he thought Darwin described them: “My experiments show that they are not independent residents in the blood.” Unsuccessful he may have been, but Galton here firmed up the line of thought that took him towards his influential “ancestral law of heredity” in which he proposed that the inheritable material was passed on to offspring in due proportion from previous generations.40

Galton was troubled because he began the work in good faith, intending to prove Darwin right; and he praised pangenesis in Hereditary Genius in 1869. Somehow he had unintentionally proved Darwin wrong. Cautiously, he criticised his cousin’s theory, although qualifying his remarks by saying that Darwin’s gemmules (he called them “pangenes”) might be only temporary inhabitants of the blood and that his experiments could have failed to pick them up.

Naturally enough, Darwin wanted Galton to keep these unsatisfactory results to himself. Yet Galton went ahead and published them in Nature in 1871, followed by another article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Darwin objected to having his theory’s shortcomings advertised in this fashion among his scientific friends. He published a rebuttal in which he maintained he had not said anything about gemmules being in the blood. Galton was surprised to receive so curt a response. Offended, he backed down, claiming he was acting only as “a loyal member of the flock.” In the end, Darwin also backed down. He modified his wording in later editions of Variation, admitting in a footnote that he would have expected to find gemmules in the blood, although their presence there was not absolutely necessary to his hypothesis. Pangenesis suddenly seemed much harder to establish than either man anticipated. Only the rabbits benefitted. Darwin agreed to rehouse them at Down House, sending his man Mark up to London to collect them. “The rabbits arrived safe last night & are lively & pretty this morning,” he reported.

The setback did not prevent him encouraging others. In 1870 he thanked E. Ray Lankester for saying a few kind words about pangenesis: “I was pleased to see you refer to my much despised child, ‘Pangenesis,’ who I think will some day, under some better nurse, turn out a fine stripling.”41 And he congratulated John Tyndall for commenting on it in a presidential address to the British Association. “You are a rash man to say a word for Pangenesis, for it has hardly a friend amongst naturalists, yet after long pondering (how true your remarks are on pondering) I feel a deep conviction that Pangenesis will some day be generally accepted.”42

In the main, Variation was noted by contemporaries for its densely packed accounts of horticultural and agricultural practice, its attempt to classify types of variation, and Darwin’s useful rounding-up of historic material about early breeds.

One clarification was helpful. In

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