M. Balbiaui on the Reproduction of the Aphides. ^Q7 



Aphides does not seem to me to rest upon any solid basis ; and 

 the general opinion which regards the most habitual mode of 

 reproduction of the Aphides as a case of agamogenesis is alone 

 true. I have, however, no pretension to claim, by the publica- 

 tion of this note, any scientific rights in connexion with the 

 embryogeny of the Aphides. Those who have resumed the in- 

 vestigation of these singular phenomena at the point where Mr. 

 Huxley had left it, and who have caused it to advance remark- 

 ably, are at present MM. Mecznikow and Balbiani alone. If I 

 have taken up the pen, it is because there existed between these 

 two observers such considerable differences upon one point, and 

 that a fundamental one, that it was necessary to test their 

 observations. But I feel perfectly that if, by these few lines, I 

 assist in banishing an error from science, I nevertheless intro- 

 duce no new fact. Definitively I leave matters where M. Mecz- 

 nikow has placed them. 



LIIl. — Remarks on M. Claparede's Note on the Reproduction of 

 Me Aphides. By M. Balbiani*. 



Although M. Milne-Edwards has had the kindness to com- 

 municate to me M. Claparede's note before its insertion in the 

 'Annales,' I do not think it necessary to reply at the moment to 

 the objections which the author endeavours to raise against my 

 interpretation of the mode of reproduction of the viviparous 

 Aphides, or to some perfectly gratuitous allegations which his 

 paper contains. I think this reply will be better placed in the 

 memoir, accompanied by plates, which I propose shortly to 

 publish upon the generation of the Aphides. There is only one 

 point in M. Claparede^s note which I think it essential to 

 notice here, namely that relating to the priority which he seems 

 to claim in favour of M. Mecznikow for all the facts upon 

 which our observations present a more or less complete agree- 

 ment. 



It is certain that M. Mecznikow, three months before my 

 communications to the Academy of Sciences, published some 

 researches upon the embryogeny of the llemiptcra, which ap- 

 peared, as a preHminary notice, in Siebold and Kolliker's 'Zeit- 

 schrift.' But in this paper, which occupies in all four pages of the 

 journal in question, the author devotes only a little more than 

 one page to the development of the Aphides ; and here he omits 

 most of the more characteristic facts in the embryogeny of those 



* Annales ties Sciences Naturelles, 5* seiie, tome vii. pp. 30-31. 



