He accordingly leaves them, but I have not yet found what
other moment he considered auspicious for returning to them. He
tells us that "new experiments will be necessary, and that he has
himself already begun to undertake them." Perhaps he will give us
the results of these experiments in some future book--for that they
will prove satisfactory to him can hardly, I think, be doubted. He
writes:--
"Leaving on one side, for the moment, these doubtful and
insufficiently investigated cases, we may still maintain that the
assumption that changes induced by external conditions in the
organism as a whole are communicated to the germ-cells after the
manner indicated in Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis, is wholly
unnecessary for the explanation of these phenomena. Still we cannot
exclude the possibility of such a transmission occasionally
occurring, for even if the greater part of the effects must be
attributable to natural selection, there might be a smaller part in
certain cases which depends on this exceptional factor.
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