A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



opmental problem was being attacked in a neighboring 

 room of the laboratory by Professor Kitasato, of the 

 University of Tokio, Japan. The subjects this time, 

 were the embryos of certain fishes, and the investiga- 

 tion had to do with the development of instructive 

 monstrosities through carefully designed series of in- 

 juries inflicted upon the embryo at various stages of its 

 development. Meantime another stage of the develop- 

 mental history of organic things this time a micro- 

 scopical detail regarding the cell divisions of certain 

 plants has been studied by Professor Mottier, of 

 Indiana; while another American botanist, Professor 

 Swingle, of the Smithsonian Institution, has been go- 

 ing so far afield from marine subjects as to investigate 

 the very practical subject of the fertilization of figs 

 as practised by the agriculturists about Naples. 



Even from these few citations it will appear how 

 varied are the lines of attack of a single biological prob- 

 lem ; for here we see, at the hands of a few workers, a 

 great variety of forms of life radiates, insects, ver- 

 tebrates, low marine plants and high terrestrial ones 

 made to contribute to the elucidation of various phases 

 of one general topic, the all-important subject of hered- 

 ity. All these studies are conducted in absolute inde- 

 pendence, and to casual inspection they might seem to 

 have little affinity with one another ; yet in reality they 

 all trench upon the same territory, and each in its own 

 way tends to throw light upon a topic which, in some 

 of its phases, is of the utmost practical importance to 

 the human family. It is a long vault from the em- 

 bryo of an obscure sea-weed to the well-being of man, 

 yet it may well happen so wide in their application 



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