“I assume that cells, before their conversion into completely passive or "formed material," throw off minute granules or atoms, which circulate freely throughout the system, and when supplied with proper nutriment multiply by self-division, subsequently becoming developed into cells like those from which they were derived. These granules for the sake of distinctness may be called … gemmules. They are supposed to be transmitted from the parents to the offspring, and are generally developed in the generation which immediately succeeds, but are often transmitted in a dormant state during many generations and are then developed. Their development is supposed to depend on their union with other partially developed cells or gemmules which precede them in the regular course of growth. … Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other, leading to their aggregation either into buds or into the sexual elements. … These assumptions constitute the provisional hypothesis which I have called Pangenesis.”

—  Charles Darwin , book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication

volume II, chapter XXVII: "Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis", page 374 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=389&itemID=F877.2&viewtype=image
It is sometimes claimed that modern biologist are dogmatic "Darwinists" who uncritically accept all of Darwin's ideas. This is false: No one today accepts Darwin's hypothesis of gemmules and pangenesis.
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868)

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British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by… 1809–1882

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