THE SYSTEM 65 



this pronouncement of an expert, one might well 

 shelter oneself ; but the question under con- 

 sideration merits a little further treatment. 

 The reproduction of kind, though usually a bi- 

 sexual process, may, however, normally in rare 

 cases be uni-sexual, and this process is known as 

 Parthenogenesis. Even in human beings certain 

 tumours of the sex-glands, known as teratomata, 

 very rare in women and even rarer, if ever 

 existent, in men, have been claimed as examples 

 of attempts at parthenogenesis, and so far no 

 better explanation is available. 



Now Loeb and others have succeeded in 

 certain forms even in a vertebrate like the frog 

 in inducing development in unimpregnated 

 ova. The evidence for all these things is still 

 slender ; but we will content ourselves with 

 noting that point and passing on to the considera- 

 tion of the phenomena and the claims put forward 

 in connection with them. We find the task of 

 unravelling the writer's meaning rendered more 

 difficult by a certain confusion in his use of terms, 

 since fertilisation, i.e. syngamy the union of 

 the different sex products seems to be confused 

 with segmentation, i.e. germination ; and this 

 confusion is accentuated by the claim that " the 

 main effect of the spermatozoon in inducing the 

 development of the egg consists in an alteration 

 in the surface of the latter which is apparently 

 of the nature of a cytolysis of the cortical layer. 

 Anything that causes this alteration without 

 endangering the rest of the egg may induce its 

 development." When the spermatozoon enters 



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