Some gemmules were thought to remain dormant for generations, whereas others were routinely expressed by all offspring. Every child was built up from selective expression of the mixture of the parents and grandparents' gemmules coming from either side. Darwin likened this to gardening: a flowerbed could be sprinkled with seeds "most of which soon germinate, some lie for a period dormant, whilst others perish." He did not claim gemmules were in the blood, although his theory was often interpreted in this way. Responding to Fleming Jenkin's review of "On the Origin of Species", he argued that pangenesis would permit the preservation of some favourable variations in a population so that they wouldn't die out through blending.