references provided certainly suggest that Baer is as yet 

 poorly understood, despite the several biographical sketches, 

 and that historians of science would do well to explore his 

 complex Russian connections - both before his move to and 

 after his return from Germany. 



CHAPTER 2 5 serves as a transition to the third stage 

 of world and hence Russian embryology (featured in Blyakher's 

 second volume) . It considers figures after Baer but before 

 Mechnikov and Kovalevsky. The focus is on Grube, Nordmann, 

 Warnek, and Krohn in particular. These men made way for 

 Kovalevsky and Mechnikov, according to Blyakher, and these 

 latter men effected the revolution from comparative-descriptive 

 to comparative-evolutionary embryological science. 



NOTES - These notes have not been translated, obviously. 

 Some offer biographical information, others provide references 

 to additional scientific and other works, while still others 

 elaborate on the text. These notes are cited in the text by 

 the numbers enclosed in square brackets: (#) . 



The above brief outline sketches Blyakher's volume. 

 Throughout, the work remains descriptive. Each chapter thus 

 provides details of the works and people it considers. Some 

 of these descriptions are so extremely thorough as almost 

 to reproduce the original sources being considered, while 

 others provide essentially an index or overview of their 

 subjects. To my knowledge, the descriptions seem consistently 

 reliable and useful. 



VALUE OF THE WORK 



As suggested above, Blyakher's work contributes both 

 useful description of little-read source materials and a 

 particularly Russian perspective. The latter, which clearly 

 directs what interpretation Blyakher does offer, only 

 occasionally intrudes on the narrative. As noted earlier, 

 Blyakher does at rare times become fervent in his attempts 

 to establish that "Russia is the fatherland of embryology as 

 a science." Yet he would appear to have considerable evidence 

 that his claim should at least be taken seriously. Western 



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