interest in Russia, which has not been widely studied, 

 and that historians of science should therefore explore 

 the subject more seriously. 



CHAPTER 2 discusses the preformation and new forma- 

 tion (alias epigenesis) exchanges. This chapter offers few 

 new insights into these debates, but the reader should 

 recall that Blyakher was writing in the early 1950 ! s and 

 that his Russian audience was likely unfamiliar (or only 

 recently familiar) with material which a western audience 

 might find much more familiar. Blyakher' s listing of partisans 

 on either side and his discussion of the issues here and in 

 later chapters are essentially clear and potentially useful 

 even if not profound. 



CHAPTER 3 introduces that great adopted Russian, 

 Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, who then provides the subject of 

 Chapters 5-8 as well. Wolff deserves more credit than he 

 has received (by 1955, remember), Blyakher asserts; everyone 

 from Russian historians to German historians to Wolff's 

 contemporaries have reportedly been consistent in their 

 underestimation of Wolff's significance. Here, Blyakher 

 becomes a bit zealous in his efforts to make Russian everyone 

 and everything which seems good or important. He faults the 

 Russian historian and biographer Boris Evgen'evic Raikov, 

 for example, for suggesting that Wolff felt ideologically 

 isolated after his move to Russia in 1767. Not the case, 

 Blyakher insists. ". . .in Germany Wolff was not evaluated 

 as a first class investigator and advanced thinker. This 

 forced him to move to Russia, and therefore Germany does 

 not have the right to claim Wolff's glory." 



While Blyakher 's claim is silly as stated and while it 

 might seem exaggerated and annoying to the modern historian 

 of science, it may also reveal valuable insight. It would 

 be well for historians of biology to recall that Wolff was 

 little known in Germany; that he did move from Germany to 

 Russia in 1767, albeit after much of his major embryological 

 work had been completed and published; that his biographers 

 have found the reasons for his move unclear; but that 

 St. Petersburg did offer important collections of embryo- 

 logical and teratological specimens and that Wolff seems 

 to have used them to advantage. Thus, perhaps St. Petersburg 



