514 CHARLES W. HARGITT 
It is not a new problem; many investigators having directed 
attention to the matter. Strangely, however, there has been 
no very serious attempt to explain its probable significance, fur- 
ther than to suggest, as Wilson had done long ago (’00), its pos- 
sible relation to the extremely active metabolism involved during 
the growth period of the egg. Unfortunately, there seem to be 
serious difficulties involved in such an interpretation ; for example, 
the fact that in many ova growth seems to be almost nil. Fur- 
thermore, it is not certain that just this type of fragmentation 
occurs in all eggs just at this period. But whatever may be its 
significance certain it is that in large numbers of organisms there 
seems to occur at this time this very interesting fact, that a largely 
preponderating proportion of chromatin is lost, or at least takes 
no part in the formation of the chromosomes, and so is a negative 
factor so far as relates to chromosome function or theory. The 
bearing of this on the question of chromosome individuality is 
not without great interest and importance; but no attempt can 
be made to discuss the problem here. It may be suggested, how- 
ever, that defenders of the extreme views of chromosome indi- 
viduality in its morphological sense,—and only in such sense has 
it any essential significance,—are confronted with a problem, the 
complexity of which is beyond estimate, and the difficulty of 
which is hardly less so. Let him who finds difficult the intricacies 
of ‘germ-plasm’ hypothesis beware in essaying to unravel the 
no less intricate mystery, or miracle, of preserving individuality 
in the metabolic maze through which chromatin must. pass in 
every cytogenic cycle! 
In the previous paper (op. cit.’00, , p. 227), attention was direc- 
ted to the very anomalous aspects of nuclei during early cleavage, 
features of which were shown in several sketches. Certain of 
these presented rather strong indications of amitosis, though the 
condition of the chromatin was such as greatly to obscure the 
finer details of nuclear structure, and the suggestion was made 
that ‘‘certain phases of the mitotic mechanism may be disguised 
or actually lacking.’”’ As shown above, mitosis has been demon- 
strated during maturation, yet something of the original doubt 
remains as to mitosis during early cleavage, the newer material 
