260 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
stated, the only contrast which we believe to be sound is a 
relative one, which contrasts the ratio a in either case. ] 
Having taken, as the essential distinction between the egg 
and the spermatozoon, “that the cytoplasm preponderates in 
the one, while the nucleoplasm preponderates in the other,” 
Mr Ryder continues his argument as follows :— 
“There was a time when asexual reproduction, through 
fission without karyokinesis, was effected by forms which 
were morphologically male.” By “morphologically male ”— 
a somewhat question-begging and unfortunate phrase—the 
author means that the primitive cells were flagellate cells, 
“poorly provided with cytoplasm, with preponderant chroma- 
tin.” “The really primordial type of the germs of all living 
forms is a flagellate cell, and not an ovum.” Sometimes he 
compares them to bacteria, “ with lack of differentiation into 
nuclear and cytoplasmic matter.” “The male state also, as 
represented in the spermatic body, tends to revert to the 
most ancient form of all free mobile organisms, namely, 
the flagellate Schizomycetes.” “In the lowest living forms, 
chromatin presumably preponderates ;” or again, “ their sub- 
stance is mainly chromatin-like.” 
From all this he draws the conclusion that “ maleness,” or 
the condition of the flagellate spore, is the primitive one. 
“The male state is therefore the primitive one, and in the 
prodigious fertility of the male represents the primordial, 
asexual, flagellate types.” 
In the course of evolution, however, as the result of 
“cumulative integration,” an increase of cytoplasm came 
about, “which proceeded so fast, that its products could 
not be converted into nucleoplasm or chromatin with suffi- 
cient rapidity so as to be in a condition to fall apart as small 
cells, as a consequence of the action of the direct process of 
fission.” The evidence for this is the supposed fact that 
the nucleoplasm or chromatin, in higher forms, is derived by 
constructive metabolism from cytoplasm, and is the end- 
product of the latter. 
“The secondary evolution of a cytoplasmic field led toa 
process of divergent evolution, or in the production of two 
