172 PICTURING MIRACLES 



tured and studied. The procedure is as follows: 

 There are six little openings near its head where one 

 carefully inserts a hollow glass needle, from a tube 

 drawn out over a flame, and extracts a few eggs from 

 the female and some milky white sperm from the 

 male. These eggs are just large enough to see, if one 

 has good eyes. They are about %oo of an inch in 

 diameter. They are flattened spheres in shape; under 

 the microscope they look somewhat like doughnuts, 

 a ring of more or less opaque yolk surrounding a 

 mass of translucent protoplasm, and nucleus in the 

 center. To picture them I cemented a glass ring on 

 the slide that would hold about four drops of salt 

 water, then put in a very few eggs, put on a cover 

 slip and started to picture them. At first no move- 

 ments are visible. The eggs are in their resting stage. 

 I had broken off a tiny corner of the cover slip, leav- 

 ing a very small opening. From a single drop of 

 sperm from the male urechis which was diluted in 

 a glass of water, I took a very small drop and placed 

 it carefully near the opening, letting it come in con- 

 tact with the water holding the eggs. Almost in- 

 stantly the microscopic sperm could be seen shooting 

 across to the egg and adhering to it. There might 

 have been hundreds of sperm in that pinhead size 

 drop of diluted extract but it took only one to fer- 

 tilize the egg. Almost at once a change in the egg 



