ANIMALCULISTS V. OVULISTS. 37 



vigorous contest, which resulted in the division of the 

 physiologists of the eighteenth century into two large 

 bodies of combatants, entirely opposed and contending 

 vehemently. These were the Animalculists, and the Ovu- 

 lists. The dispute between these two parties appears 

 laughable to us now, for the theory of the one is just as 

 unfounded as that of the other. As Alfred Kirchhoff says, 

 in an excellent biographical sketch of Wolff, " this dispute 

 was as little capable of settlement, as the inquiry whether 

 the angels lived in the East or in the West of the heavenly 

 regions." w 



The Animalculists, or the Believers in Sperm, looked 

 upon the moving seminal threads as the real animal germs, 

 and they found support on the one hand in the lively 

 movement, and on the other in the form of these seminal 

 animalcules. For in the case of man, as well as of a large 

 majority of other animals, they appear to have a somewhat 

 oblong, egg-like, or pear-like head, a thin intermediate 

 segment, and a very thin tail, narrowing to a hair-like 

 form (Fig. 17). In reality, the whole formation is but a 

 simple whip-shaped cell. The head is the cellular nucleus, 

 surrounded by cell-matter, which is protracted into the 

 thinner portions in the middle, and to the hair-like, move- 

 able tail ; the latter is the whip, or thread-like appendage of 

 other whip-shaped cells. The Animalculists, however, con- 

 sidered the head to be a real animal head, and the rest of 

 the body to be a complete animal body. Leeuwenhoek, 

 Hartsoeker, and Spallanzani were the chief defenders of 

 this theory of Pre-delineation. 



The opposite party, the Ovulists (Ovists), or Believers 

 in Eggs, who adhered to the older Theory of Evolution, 



