114 SEX 



the male relatively the more disruptive* 

 The sexes express a fundamental difference 

 in the rhythm of metabolism. 



A young germ-cell has, metaphorically, an 

 alternative between two different, but equally 

 viable, lines of life the male and the female. 

 It is shunted on to the one or the other by 

 the surrounding conditions. Influences which 

 favour a preponderance of anabolic processes, 

 which affect the nucleus-cytoplasmic relation 

 in a manner favouring cytoplasmic assimi- 

 lation, tend to the increase of female-pro- 

 ducing eggs. Influences that operate in 

 the opposite direction favour the increase of 

 male-producing eggs. 



What we are suggesting is a physiological 

 way of looking at the problem, and the idea 

 that the sex-contrast expresses a physiological 

 alternative. This is confirmed in various 

 ways. For instance, there is sometimes very 

 striking evidence that sex is " a quality that 

 pervades all the cells of the organism." 

 E. B. Wilson notes the extraordinary fact 

 surely of profound importance that : " In 

 the Mosses the Marchals demonstrate that 

 all the products of a single spore are likewise 

 immutably determined, since new plants 

 formed by regeneration from fragments of 

 the protonema, or from any part of the game- 

 tophyte, are always of the same sex." 



Of the association of maleness (or sperm- 

 producing) and femaleness (or ovum-producing) 

 with different conditions of metabolism many 

 illustrations might be given, but we must be 

 content here with two or three. Is it not 

 significant, for instance, that in some cater- 



