380 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



of newly deposited eggs. In the majority of the eggs deposited in worker- 

 cells examined by him, he found spermatozoids ; sometimes as many as four. 

 In some instances, these singular filaments still retained the power of motion. 

 On examining twenty-seven drone-eggs, laid by the same queen which had 

 furnished a portion of the female eggs, von Siebold did not discover a single 

 spcrmatozoid. 



'' Such is the outline of the results at which the distinguished author has 

 arrived ; and although many will perhaps be disinclined to give an unhesi- 

 tating adhesion to his views, there can be no doubt that his work is one of 

 the most important that has appeared for a longtime; one well worthy of 

 being carefully studied by all physiologists, and one that must, in the end, 

 greatly advance the cause of science, if only by calling the attention of ob- 

 servers to this singular and much-neglected subject." 



It would appear, from observed facts, that, among some of the lower ani- 

 mals, it is of no more account for one of them to bud out a complete animal 

 of its kind, than for a crab to reproduce its mutilated claw. Moreover, it 

 seems to be also true that the budding process may take place in the ovary, 

 and that it may evolve an egg or something very like an egg, thus com- 

 mencing with the first step in the reproductive process ; or it may evolve a 

 bulb-like mass from other parts of the body, like that in ordinary gemma- 

 tion ; and each may develop into an individual animal, or what will produce 

 such individuals. Whether formed in one place or another, a germinating 

 cellule, or a spot or collection of cellules, begins the development, and the 

 whole process, from its initiatory step to the end, is a regular growth from 

 the single budding individual. 



Moreover, the observations in the plant kingdom appear to show definitely 

 (confirmatory of Mr. Lubbock's observations in the Daphnia), that in the 

 case of ovary reproduction, the ovule which develops without impregnation 

 is identical in its initial growth with that prepared for impregnation accord- 

 ing to the ordinary seed-producing process. Yet, not to lose sight of the 

 diverse relations of the two modes of reproduction, we should remember 

 that, normally, in every species which buds or produces budding eggs, there 

 are also the opposite sexes for true egg-development ; that even the lowest 

 sea- weed has its conjugation of oppositely related cells for spore-reproduc- 

 tion ; that reproduction of this one-sex kind is confined to the lower grades 

 of species among animals, and some of these, like the Aphis, find the pro- 

 cess so easy that they can turn off their germ-buds by the myriads, and still 

 there is here a periodical recourse to the true sexual process; that in some 

 animals, like the Daphnia, while the ovaries produce eggs of both kinds, the 

 normal eggs pass to another cavity, and early show their distinctive charac- 

 ter; that, in fine, a distinction of sex (a kind of sexual polarity) is the grand 

 universal law for reproduction in life, and is never altogether set aside even 

 for the inferior species, while absolutely essential in the higher. Moreover, 

 this supplemental and inferior means of propagation, or budding, is but an 

 expansion of the ordinary law of growth ; the same law that reproduces the 

 nails and hair in man, the tail of a mutilated snake, or the legs of a maimed 

 crustacean, evolves the polyp from the bud of a polyp, the Aphis from the 

 Aphis germ-bud, or the plant from an unimpregnated ovule. The Aphis 

 germ-bud or the unimpregnated ovule may be considered as only a minuter 

 or more concentrated form of the bulb or bulbel. 



The process by which the female produces the ovule which is afterwards 

 to be impregnated is essentially a budding process, and not until after im- 



