1 68 CARL RICHARD MOORE. 



Fertilizin is obtained normally in sea water that has stood 

 over a quantity of Arbacia eggs in a test tube. The substance is 

 liberated from the egg and passes out into sea water until the 

 latter becomes highly charged with the egg secretion. 



Sperm suspensions to be used as indicators are made up from 

 the stock of "dry sperm." 1 Usually a I per cent, suspension was 

 used (i drop dry sperm + 99 drops sea water) and is mounted 

 on a slide beneath a raised cover slip on the stage of a microscope, 

 and the supernatant fluid to be tested is blown into the suspension 

 by means of a fine capillary pipette, connected with a flexible 

 rubber tube held in the mouth, while the sperm are in focus 

 under a low power of the microscope. 



In conducting the series of washings, sea water was added to 

 eggs in a graduated tube and the volume of eggs and sea water 

 denoted by the numerator of the fraction; the denominator 

 represents the volume of eggs and sea-water remaining in the 

 tube after the supernatant fluid has been removed. Each time 

 after the addition of sea water, the tube was slowly inverted 

 six times to insure a thorough mixing of the eggs and sea-watei . 



Some investigators have offered certain objections to the 

 current interpretations of the agglutination reaction as well as 

 to the facts encountered. Thus Loeb persistently contends, 

 even in the face of definite proof to the contrary, that fertilizin 

 is not a secretion of the egg but is only found in the clear jelly 

 layer surrounding the egg. The present results however entirely 

 confirm Lillie's contentions that eggs totally deprived of this clear 

 jelly layer continue to liberate fertilizin in very great quantities. 

 This jelly layer almost entirely disappears from the surface 

 of the egg after a three-second exposure to butyric acid and ic 

 is entirely gone after five seconds; yet eggs exposed to the acid 

 for two to five minutes or longer, and thoroughly washed by 

 several changes of water, still continue to produce the aggluti- 

 nating substance. Neither does it take a "fertilizin partisan," 

 as Loeb has suggested, to see it. The wiiter has demonstrated 

 the reaction to numbers of investigators at the Marine Biological 

 Laboratory who had never before observed the longer, more 

 intense, reaction of a secretion from untreated eggs. Indeed it 



1 See page 141. 



