This pioneering work on experimental entomology incorporates Bonnet’s most important discovery–parthenogenetic reproduction–based on his study of aphids. Bonnet used the result of this and other discoveries as a basis for speculation about life on earth. This work presents in tabular form his version of the “great chain of being”. Bonnet’s concept of the essential continuity of life, a consequence of his discovery and preformationist interpretation of parthenogenesis, was a major force in the shaping of later evolutionary opinion. See No. 472.

In his study of plant physiology Bonnet contributed significant research on phototropism. Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Bonnet’s theory of generation offered the best synthesis of 18th century ideas of development and remained a leading authority until von Baer. Bonnet believed in the preformation of the embryo. He used many of Haller’s arguments to support his own opinions. J. Needham (No.533) calls him an organicistic preformationist, for his objection to epigenesis lay in the fact that it apparently did not allow for the integration of the organism as a whole.