The Perpetuation of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission and Variation

The inquiry which we undertook, at our last meeting, into the state of our knowledge of the causes of the phenomena of organic nature, -of the past and of the present, -resolved itself into two subsidiary inquiries: the first was, whether we know anything, either historically or experimentally, of the mode of origin of living beings; the second subsidiary inquiry was, whether, granting the origin, we know anything about the perpetuation and modifications of the forms of organic being