WEL 
ON THE HISTORY OF THE EARLIER EXPERIMENTS ON 
ARTIFICIAL PARTHENOGENESIS 
The observations upon the natural parthenogenesis of 
Bombyx mori were the starting-point for investigations upon 
artificial parthenogenesis. In the year 1847 a French author, 
Boursier, stated “that he had placed a female silkworm moth, 
which had not paired with a male, first in the sunlight and then 
in the shade, where (in both cases) it had laid many eggs. 
Caterpillars had been produced from each of those eggs laid 
in the sunlight.’”! 
Von Siebold comments upon this: “Since in the foregoing 
cases nobody attributed the fertilization of the eggs to the 
influence of the light and warmth of the sun, as Boursier has 
done, one cannot abstain from regarding this phenomenon as a 
case of parthenogenesis.”’ Considering the above-mentioned 
observation of Barthélémy upon the difference in behavior of 
the summer and winter eggs, and also the theoretical results 
of the investigations upon artificial parthenogenesis to be 
mentioned later, it is a priori not impossible that the tempera- 
ture to which the newly laid egg of Bombyx mori is exposed 
may be of importance for its development. 
In the year 1886, Tichomiroff? published a short note on 
“ Artificial Parthenogenesis in Insects,”’ the object of which was 
to lend fresh support to the work of Herold and von Siebold 
upon natural parthenogenesis in the silkworm. “It has long 
been known that the eggs of Bombyx mori can develop partheno- 
genetically; yet one is always hearing doubts expressed about 
1 Von Siebold, Wahre Parthenogenese, p. 126, Leipzig, 1856. 
2A. Tichomiroff, ‘‘Die kiinstliche Parthenogenese bei Insekten,’’ Arch. f. 
Anat. u. Physiol., Physiol. Abt., 1886, Suppl., p. 35; Zoologischer Anzeiger, XXV, 
386, 1902. 
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