758 JOHN BEARD, 



is beyond the scope of the present enquiry. With the facts recorded 

 here it will in future be impossible to regard the regulation of sex 

 as, strictly considered, an embryological problem. But it may be per- 

 missible to draw attention to one or two of its aspects, and to state 

 some conclusions concerning these. 



From the preceding pages it would, of course, follow, that the 

 males of a species have as little influence on the regulation of sex 

 for the following generation as upon its determination. In other words, 

 the regulation of sex, like its determination, must lie with the fe- 

 males. The proportion of the two sexes, produced by any given 

 female, and in most instances the order of development of male and 

 female embryos do not belong to the question, for these two factors 

 may be determined by the "ancestry" of the particular individual, and 

 Nature, as Tennyson wrote, is "careless of the single life". The in- 

 dividuals of a species stand in a relation to her, similar to that occu- 

 pied by the common soldiers of a great army to the Field Marshal 

 Commanding, the difference being, that in Nature's vastly greater army 

 of the race the individual is far more insignificant than in the human 

 machine. 



What Nature concerns herself with is the regulation of the pro- 

 portion of the sexes for the race as a whole: any and, indeed, every 

 individual case may be an exception. Eliminating the males, and 

 disregarding the cases of individual females, from known facts and 

 factors and from the recognition, that sex and what appertains to it 

 are decided very early in the life of one generation for the next follow- 

 ing one, certain conclusions may be reached. 



It must first of all be noted, that the normal proportion of the 

 sexes varies enormously in different species. Thus, in some Baph- 

 nidae, according to the researches of Weismann, already cited, male 

 individuals either never occur at all, or only at long intervals. This 

 is an extreme case, but it will serve to demonstrate, that the pro- 

 portion of the sexes is largely due to hereditary influences. This 

 becomes certain from Weismann's discovery, that in some instances 

 they appear only in fixed predetermined generations. 



Apart from such exceptional examples it would appear to be a 

 general rule in very many portions of the animal kingdom — and 

 among plants — that the first offspring should be either predominantly 

 male, or even entirely so. Additional evidence in the like direction 

 is furnished by hermaphroditism. Zoologists have long recognised in 

 very many cases of this, that the first "sexual cells" to ripen are the 



