1904.] MONTGOMERY — MORPHOLOGICAL SUPERIORITY. 373 



universal) possession of an intromittent organ is perhaps of the 

 most weight. Beyond this the male may possess clasping organs, 

 in a few cases have larger sense organs, and show brighter or more 

 contrasted coloration, and sometimes be more varied in external 

 form. This is all he has to show in the claim of superiority. 

 While the female possesses an internal reproductive apparatus which 

 is generally of much greater complexity than that of the male, and 

 sometimes a central nervous system of higher specialization, a con- 

 dition which probably will be found to be general in all those num- 

 erous cases where the female carries out the chief cares of maternal 

 solicitude for the young. And almost without exception the female 

 is larger than the male, a character of some structural value, because 

 it implies, ceteris paribus, a longer or intenser process of embryonic 

 development. When either of the sexes is rudimentary in compari- 

 son with the other, it is in almost all cases the male. All the facts 

 point to the male being the more embryonic and less developed, 

 and none to his being the morphologically more progressive. 



Physiologically, also, the female appears the superior in most of 

 the Invertebrates. The male Rotatorian, as I have watched him, 

 •emerges from an ^gg much smaller than that which produces a 

 female, lives a day or two without feeding for the good reason that 

 he has no digestive organs, then dies ; while the much larger and 

 more complicated female lives for months. In Insects and Spiders 

 the male seems to be always shorter-lived than his mate, generally 

 takes no part in the care of the young and dies immediately after 

 impregnating the female. But the female lives on after impregna- 

 tion, sometimes for months before depositing the eggs; then ovi- 

 posits, often after great care for the protection of the young ; not 

 until all this is accomplished does she die. We may say that the 

 female develops more slowly, reaches a larger size and lives 

 longer, and this, together with her care for the progeny, classes her 

 as the distinctly important individual in the economy of Nature. 



2. The Vertebrate Animals. 



When we turn to the Vertebrates the comparison of the sexes 

 becomes more difficult, especially in the higher forms. The 

 primary sexual characters may be considered first, then the sec- 

 ondary. 



In the matter of the reproductive organs there is a complicated 

 series of facts of structure, which have not yet received adequate 



PROC. AMEK. PHIL03. SOC. XLIII. 178. Y. PRINTED DEC. 29, 1904. 



