XVIII 

 THE MICROCOSM OF THE EGG 



DARWIN called the brain of the ant the 

 most marvelous speck of matter in the 

 universe. It is so intricate for its size less than 

 that of a pin's-head; it is the repository of so 

 many ready-made tricks. But even more marvelous 

 than the ant's brain is the much minuter ant's egg- 

 cell (what we buy as "ants' eggs" are pupae under- 

 going metamorphosis), which, in a manner that we 

 cannot begin to imagine, contains the potentiality 

 of the whole insect and of all its instincts as well. 

 The more we know about the ovum, the more the 

 wonder grows. It may be of interest, then, to look 

 for a little into the pit whence we were digged, 

 and upon the rock whence we were hewn. For, 

 like most other living creatures, we all begin as 

 fertilized egg-cells. A convenient up-to-date ac- 

 count of the whole matter will be found in Professor 

 Brachet's L'CEuf (1917), a brilliant course of lec- 

 tures which this embryologist of Brussels has re- 

 cently delivered at the College de France. 



The egg-cell, or ovum, is typically a very minute 

 living unit. The dark-colored ovum of the frog 

 is about one-tenth of an inch in diameter, but this 

 is gigantic compared with the ovum of most 



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