be only directed to the fact that an anatomist would take exception to it as a purposeless purposiveness, and would feel a disheartened wonder thereat. But the production of hybrids could absolutely not be accommodated with the system of preformation; and to the seeds of the male creature, to which they had attributed nothing but the mechanical property of serving as the first means of nourishment for the embryo, they must attribute in addition a purposive formative power, which in the case of the product of two creatures of the same genus they would concede to neither parent.

On the other hand, even if we do not recognise the great superiority which the theory of Epigenesis has over the former as regards the empirical grounds of its proof, still prior to proof Reason views this way of explanation with peculiar