CHAPTER 13 discusses Khristian Pander, von Baer's 

 fellow student at Wurzburg studying under Dollinger. 

 Dollinger and von Baer convinced Pander to apply his 

 apparently significant financial resources to procure the 

 necessary large number of eggs in order to trace details of 

 chick development during the first five days of life. Pander's 

 work, despite criticism by Lorenz Oken which Blyakher dis- 

 cusses in detail, provided a starting point for future study 

 in epigenetic developmental biology, and especially notably, 

 it served as a foundation for von Baer's work. At one point, 

 Blyakher almost perversely manages to make Pander's weak- 

 nesses sound like strengths. He says that Pander's errors 

 were valuable and that they were important in part because 

 they later "allowed Baer to give the true interpretation." 

 As before, Blyakher 's interpretation remains retrospective 

 and frustrating at times, but his data are useful for an 

 introduction to this material. 



CHAPTER 14 THROUGH 24 deal with Karl Ernst von 

 Baer, here Karl Maksimovich Baer. 14 provides biographical 

 information and outlines his professional career. 15 presents 

 Baer's discovery of the mammalian ovum and reveals concern 

 both with establishing Baer's priority and with opposition 

 to Baer's work. CHAPTERS 16 THROUGH 2 2 describe Baer's 

 opus, UBER ENTWICKELUNGSGESCHICHTE. Originally pub- 

 lished in Germany (volume 1 1828, volume 2 1837, volume 2 

 part 2 1888), Baer's work appeared in Russian translation 

 only in 1950 and 1953, which may have provided one stimulus 

 to Blyakher to publish his historical study. Blyakher 

 evidently relied on the Russian translation, so I have had 

 to provide references to the German original (as mentioned 

 above). Few people have read through Baer's long and detailed 

 study completely, so Blyakher 's discussion of all five 

 scholia and corollaries and of the rest of the work, of 

 which many are aware but which few read, will prove useful. 



Most important, though, is the discussion of Baer's 

 volume 2, and especially in CHAPTER 2 2 of the fourth 

 part which forms the second part of volume 2. This section 

 was published not by Baer himself but by Ludwig Stieda, 

 after Baer's death. Baer had not completed the work, and 

 Stieda discovered the manuscript while working through Baer's 

 materials in order to produce a biography. Baer had begun his 



10 



