GENERATION AND INHERITANCE 293 



times before 1875 in different objects (mollusks, nematodes) by 

 Warneck (Ueber die Bildung und Entwickelung des Embryos bei Gas- 

 tropoden, Bull, de la soc. des. Natur. de Moscou, vol. xxm), Biitschli 

 (Studien uber die ersten Entwicklungsvor gauge der Eizelle, 1876), and 

 Auerbach (Organologische Studien, vol. n, 1874), and their coalescence 

 with one another was observed. It, however, occurred to no one to 

 see in this coalescence of egg- and sperm-nuclei the process of fertil- 

 ization. The nuclei were looked upon as new formations (vacuoles) 

 in the egg whose nucleus had been lost. Biitschli believed that the 

 germinal vesicle was completely thrown off. Auerbach thought it was 

 dissolved by karyolysis. Thus it was taught that when seminal bodies 

 penetrated into the egg-cell, they were destroyed by complete solution. 



Born is therefore wrong when he states in an article which ap- 

 peared in 1898 (Anatom. Anzeiger, vol. 14, no. 9), "Auerbach has 

 given the modern study of fertilization its lasting basis. It should 

 never be forgotten that this service belongs to Auerbach alone." 



Auerbach was far away from the correct interpretation of the phe- 

 nomena. He knew only that through the coalescence of two nuclei 

 which arose as vacuoles in the yolk at opposite ends of the egg, 

 material differences, individual mistakes in composition, between 

 the two halves, were adjusted. According to his conception, "The 

 necessity for the whole complex of phenomena is caused by the 

 special peculiarity of the fertilized Nematode eggs, namely, by their 

 elongated shape and by the peculiar condition during the act of. 

 fertilization by which the eggs forcing themselves through a narrow 

 canal offer at first only their anterior polar region to the zoosperms." 



Otherwise, Auerbach has expressed himself very correctly as to the 

 relation between his and my investigations in speaking of my work. 

 (Jenaer Literatur Zeitung, dritter Jahrgang, 1876, no. 101, p. 107). 

 After a short reference to the contents, he remarks: "These observa- 

 tions confirm, as the author explains, as regards the conjugation of 

 two nuclei of independent origin in the egg, those of the writer, but' 

 vary from these in that the author ascribes to the two nuclei nott 

 merely, as the present writer, a slight qualitative difference caused by 

 fertilization, and does not look upon them merely as new formations, 

 but rather sees in one the morphological remainder of the egg-nucleus, 

 in the other that of the sperm-cell. It is evident that if, in the 

 further development of the subject, the results won by the author 

 should be confirmed, a new light will be thrown upon the fertilization 

 process, the aim of which would be accordingly a conjugation of the 

 nuclei of a male and female sexual cell." Hensen was among the first 

 to value correctly the importance of the theory of fertilization pro- 

 posed by me. In his article "The Physiology of Generation," in Her- 

 mann's Handbuch der Physiologic, vol. vi, part 2, p. 126, he remarks: 

 "This conception of fertilization must be looked upon as a fortunate 



