310 



Some Observations on the Human Spermatozoon. 



By E. M. Nelson. 



(Bead September 28th, 1888). 



Plate XXIV. 



Thoughtful minds are to a certain extent paralyzed, so to 

 speak, when contemplating either the very great or very small. 



Who on viewing through a telescope the nearest known fixed 

 star in the northern hemisphere (61 (xyiri) has not felt a pecu- 

 liar dread stealing over him when he remembers that the 

 hundreds of billions of vibrations per second falling on the 

 nerve terminals in his eye, thus producing the sensation 

 called light, were originated in that star some three or four 

 years ago ? What must be the distance of that star as com- 

 pared with the size of our earth, light travelling at a velocity 

 equal to nearly eight times the circumference of the earth in 

 one second of time ? Even the grandeur of terrestrial pheno- 

 mena is too little realized by us. It is only when we are 

 aroused by an awful cataclysm like that which has recently 

 occurred in Japan* that w r e comprehend even in a very imper- 

 fect manner the magnitude of the natural forces of our environ- 

 ment. 



Leaving the very great we shall find that the same mental 

 impressions are produced even in a greater degree on the con- 

 templation of the very small, because w^e seem to be more in 

 touch with them. 



A man who, during the microscopical examination of a human 

 spermatozoon, remembers that such a minute organism is capa- 

 ble of fertilizing an ovum, and of producing an individual, pos- 

 sessing the same physical and, w r hat is far stranger, the same 

 mental and perhaps moral qualities as his parent, together 

 with, it may be (this point must not be lost sight of), the 



* A correspondent, who visited the scene shortly after the volcanic 

 eruption, writing to the "Times" of September lit li, 1888, describes a 

 river of mud, head* d by a bore wave, 150-200 feet high, advancing - a mile 

 a minute and devastating 30 square miles of land. 



