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Hereditary transmission of the physical and psychical qualities of parents to their offspring; the biological law by which living beings tend to repeat their characteristics in their descendants. See Pangenesis.

One of the smaller vital units of a cell, the bearer of vitality and heredity. See Pangen, in Supplement.

or by some controlling authority; as, the law of gravitation; the laws of motion; the law heredity; the laws of thought; the laws of cause and effect; law of self-preservation.

That form of evolution in which the truly ancestral characters conserved by heredity are reproduced in development; original simple descent; -- distinguished from kenogenesis. Sometimes, in zoölogy, the abrupt metamorphosis of insects, crustaceans, etc.

An hypothesis advanced by Darwin in explanation of heredity.

The theories and teachings in regard to heredity propounded by the German biologist August Weismann, esp. in regard to germ plasm as the basis of heredity and the impossibility of transmitting acquired characteristics; -- often called neo-Darwinism.