304 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



genesis as embodying an error. The larval Aphis, says the 

 former, cannot properly be styled a \drgin, because it is an 

 incomplete organism, and " a Fid^e de virginite se rattache 

 invinciblement celle de la possibility de cessation de cet 

 dtat." He objects, therefore, to the name, because, he says, 

 Owen's conception rests on the remarkable exception of the 

 Aphis-lar\'a, in which reproductive organs, incomplete, but 

 still perfectly recognisable, have been discovered. The 

 objection, which was never very forcible, is completely 

 silenced by Von Siebold's discovery of perfect insects, male 

 and female, in the virgin-progeny of bee and moth. As to 

 Von Siebold's objection to the name, that by it Owen " con- 

 founds Parthenogenesis with alternation of generations," it 

 is met not only by the explanation Owen gives in a note to 

 the translation of Von Siebold's work (p. 11), but is further 

 met by what will probably be seen, in the following tliscus- 

 sion, to be the true state of the case ; namely, that the 

 generation of bees and moths is essentially the same as that 

 of Ascidians, Aphides, and Polypes ; and instead of con- 

 founding two distinct things in one phrase, Owen has recon- 

 ciled two seeming differences. 



Eetaining, therefore, the name Owen has given to the 

 phenomenon, let us examine his theory. Quatrefages, 

 among objections of little weight, urges one of more value 

 when he says that the process of segmentation in the yolk 

 is now known to be different from that stated by Owen, 

 being the spontaneous act of the ovum, whether the ovum 

 be fertilised or not ; and farther, that the " yolk cells " are 



