THE FEMALE GENITAL TEACT. 825 



ning of heat, the off spring is a female. If, on the contrary, impregnation occurs 

 shortly after menstruation, or in animals toward the end of the rutting period, 

 a male is the result. Based upon these facts, the following hypothesis is 

 admissible : Before menstruation the ovum, being high up in the female 

 genital tract, can be reached by a few spermatozoids only ; while, after men- 

 struation, the ovum lying in the lower part of the uterine cavity, can after coitus 

 be reached by a larger number of spermatozoids. The ovum is a formation 

 of living matter of the female, the spermatozoid a formation of living matter 

 of the male. Both have plastidules representative of the organism in toto ; 

 and if after commingling the living matter of the female be in excess, only one 

 or a few spermatozoids having entered the ovum, a female organism will be 

 produced. Should, on the contrary, many spermatozoids have entered the 

 ovum, the living matter of the father will predominate over that of the mother, 

 and the result will be a male organism. This hypothesis may sustain the idea 

 that the sex of the future individual is determined in the moment of impreg- 

 nation; it also agrees with the fact that peculiar bodily or mental properties 

 of the father are, in the majority of cases, transferred to the male offspring, 

 while bodily and mental properties of the mother usually reappear in the 

 female children, though all these characteristics may, in varying proportions, 

 be present in either sex, since every new being is the result of a mixture of 

 male and female living matter. Exceptionally, however, characteristics 

 peculiar to the father, f. i., a hare-lip, reappear in the female offspring exclu- 

 sively, for which fact the above hypothesis offers no satisfactory explanation. 

 Neither can it be understood how, in some insects (f. i., bees), male offspring 

 are produced independently of the male i.e., without sexual intercourse. 

 This strange peculiarity, to which Sieboldt first drew attention, cannot be 

 understood by any theory yet advanced, and we must rest satisfied for its 

 designation with the Greek word " parthenogenesis." 



(1) The Ovary. The essential characteristics of the ovary are 

 its epithelia, which Waldeyer terms the "germinal epithelium." 

 This observer discovered that the peritoneum produces no cover 

 for the ovary, but terminates with a jagged border at the hihis 

 of this organ. The surface of the ovary, at all periods of life, 

 is covered by one layer of columnar or cuboidal epithelia ; 

 these are the remains of the germinal epithelium which gives 

 origin, in the earliest stages of embryonal development, to all 

 glandular formations of the genito-urinary tract. Among the 

 germinal columnar epithelia Waldeyer found larger epithelia 

 of a globular shape, with a large, sharply defined nucleus, which, 

 according to him, are developed into ova. My own researches, 

 though limited, point toward the conception that the ovum is the 

 product, not of a single epithelium, but of quite a number of 

 them, which by coalescence at first produce multinuclear bodies, 

 and later exhibit only one larger central nucleus as a secondary 

 formation. 



All glandular formations of the ovary arise, according to 



