NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



buried, then, within this bit of living matter, so 

 small it is often invisible to the eye. The sperm and 

 the egg must be the carriers of all that one being 

 tansmits to its descendants. Exterior forces here 

 seem to play but a minor role. After the union of 

 the two cells, the influence of either parent seems 

 as slight as that of a hen brooding over its nest of 

 eggs. An incubator may replace it, a fact whose 

 wide significance seems a little to have escaped the 

 airy-headed folk who prattle of prenatal influence. 



But before the astonishing results here consid- 

 ered, no one dreamed that an egg could grow and 

 develop without the remotest aid of the sperms. 

 Else, how explain the supposed " facts " of heredity ? 

 How can traits and characters of the male parent 

 be transmitted to his offspring? 



Yet under some conditions the male element 

 seems not needful. Dr. Loeb succeeded in pro- 

 ducing growth without the sperm. His disconcert- 

 ing discovery was directly the result of the appli- 

 cation of his chemical theories to these processes. 



One of the lowly organisms which lend them- 

 selves so well to study and experiment are the 

 little sea-urchins, so valued by biological workers. 

 Taking the sea-urchins' eggs from the ovary, before 

 there could be the slightest possibility of contact 

 with the sperm cells, they were placed in the or- 

 dinary sea-water in which the animals live. 



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