38:3 Harris Hawthorne Wilder 



ever, extremely small and easily detachable, and it may easily have been 

 lost in the preparation. 



The two stapedes [Fig. 9] differ from the normal in one noticeable 

 feature, and that is the lack of the characteristic foramen. As its pres- 

 ence is due to the formation of a stapedial artery, which is transient 

 and embryonic in j\Ian, but persistent in certain other mammals, its lack 

 here suggests the failure of this artery in the earlier embryo, just the sort 

 of disturbance in the course of the developing carotid that might be 

 expected. 



Perhaps nowhere in my study of Cosmobia have I found the problem 

 expressed so simply as here; reduced to its lowest terms, as it were. 

 Instead of a complicated organism, with, perhaps, some degree of second- 

 ary deformation, we have here, taking either one of the compound audi- 

 tory ossicles, a simple bone, median in position, perfectly bilateral, fur- 



FiG. 9. Baldwin Synote, Teras III. 



(a) Normal stapes from the "perfect" side. 



(b) Stapes from the synotic complex; lacking the perforation. 

 Both bones are drawn to the same scale. 



nished with accessory structures, and without a trace of pathological tissue. 

 If we can explain this, we shall probably hold the key to the solution of 

 all other abnormal Cosmobia, both less and more than a normal being ; 

 perhaps, also, that of the latter as well. Modern biolog}^, in attacking 

 the problem of development, has wisely directed its attention mainly 

 upon the germ cells, and the first cell generations that proceed from them. 

 To the earlier investigations in this field, which, observational in their 

 nature and conducted under the microscope, were applied directly to the 

 germ cells, has been recently added a line of investigation by means of 

 experiment upon early embryos, with careful observations of the results. 

 In Cosmobia we have such results, and we have reason to believe that the 

 initial causes, which are at the present time unknown, lie in the early 

 germ, perhaps even in the unfertilized ovum. It is even permissible to 

 suggest that the cause may lie in a doubling or a deficiency of the primi- 



