April 1892.] THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 407 



endeavours to show that "Cumulative Integration," or assimi- 

 lation beyond the current needs of the organism, is responsible 

 for the evolution of asexual, sexual, and parthenogenetic 

 modes of reproduction. An earlier paper by the same 

 author,* I have not been able to procure, and assume that 

 the second paper contains a fuller and more matured account 

 of the ideas evolved in the previous paper, and I give therefore 

 a short rcsuyni of the paper on Cumulative Integration. 



Eyder considers the flagellate forms of Schizomycetes the 

 most ancient form of all free mobile organisms, and wanting 

 in a diff'erentiation into nuclear and cytoplasmic matter 

 (p. 118), and believes that the male element (spermatozoon) 

 represents, morphologically, a perpetuation of the most primi- 

 tive form of organised existence (p. 117), and that therefore 

 maleness, or the condition of the flagellate spore, is the 

 primitive one (p. 143). As further, Schizomycetes possess 

 no cytoplasm, but only chromatin, the author speaks of 

 chromatin as the essentially male plasma (p. 123), which 

 requires a longer time for its elaboration than the cytoplasm ; 

 and in support of the view that chromatin is the highest and 

 latest product of cellular metabolism, the following proofs 

 are mentioned : — It is primitively the most central element 

 of the cell; it is most homogeneous and least like an 

 emulsion ; it is the latest to appear when developed in great 

 quantity from the nuclei of egg-like spermatogonia. 



Chromatin is further stated to control the process of 

 intussusception of new material, a process which falls on the 

 shoulders of the cytoplasm, and the cytoplasm in its turn 

 to become gradually changed into chromatin (p. 121), or, in 

 other words, the cytoplasm to be the real agent in the pro- 

 duction of the nucleoplasm or chromatin (p. 145). If I 

 understand the author correctly, he believes that in the most 

 primitive forms of life, nourishment being scarce, the cyto- 

 plasm was only formed in such quantities as to be converted 

 at once into chromatin, and that for this reason in any 

 individual no differentiation into nucleoplasm and cytoplasm 

 took place. After, in this way, a certain amount of chromatin 

 had been formed, the latter broke up into smaller pieces, by 

 direct division, and each of these smaller pieces increased in 

 size, till from some physiological reason it split up again into 



* The Origin and Meaning of Sex, Am. Naturalist, June 1889, pp. 501-50S. 



