A Darwinian Statement of the Mendelian Theory

Abstract

So far as the present writer knows, no public notice has yet been given to a series of statements by Darwin in his “Animals and Plants under Domestication” that constitute virtually a statement of the Mendelian theory of the distribution and recombination of factors in hybrid offspring. Darwin's idea of dissociation is, of course, founded on Naudin's conception of disjunction; but the remainder of his theory is as original as Mendel's, except that it is purely speculative instead of being derived directly from experimental data. It is worked out, as a matter of fact, by means of his theory of pangenesis.