of German philosophy and a few embiyological descriptions, 

 the translation appeared to us to be accurate. The fact that 

 Blyakher's style is straightforward and essentially 

 descriptive undoubtedly helped, since the translator could 

 thus provide a rather literal translation without losing 

 the content or warping the style significantly. The fact 

 that many of the embryological terms had simply been trans- 

 literated from Latin or German into Russian and then back 

 in accordance with standard international scientific termi- 

 nology to make this translation, meant that the terms usually 

 remained recognizable. Thus, although I make no pretense of 

 certifying the precision of every detail of this transla- 

 tion, to my knowledge it is reasonably accurate at all 

 points and represents Blyakher's content and style fairly 

 closely. I very much appreciate Lauri Wiener's help in 

 verifying and improving the translation. 



Identifying some of the intended proper names and 

 dates required a bit of detective work. Double translitera- 

 tion or translation into Russian and then into English 

 created much more trouble with some of the names than did 

 translation of embryological terms. Names such as Isidore 

 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire or Cuvier produced mysterious and 

 occasionally hilarious results, as the former became Izedor 

 Zhefwar Tzent IJer, and the latter Kyuve. Joseph Needham 

 became Nidzhem, Xeeuwenhoek became Lev'nhk, and so on. As 

 might be expected, the more obscure names created the 

 greatest difficulties, but with the help of the extraordi- 

 narily helpful and competent Dickinson College Interlibrary 

 Loan staff, I managed to track down all but a couple of 

 minor Russian figures to check spellings and dates. In 

 questionable cases, I have used spellings from the Library 

 of Congress National Union Catalog. And some names are 

 left in Russian style, such as Karl Maksimovitch Baer (alias 

 Karl Ernst von Baer, of course) to reflect the importance 

 of Blyakher's claim that these men are essentially Russians. 

 In this case, Karl Maksimovitch Baer is closer to the man's 

 given name when he was born in Estonia. 



References to published and unpublished materials 

 provided even more trouble in some cases, though here, too, 

 I was able to check and correct all except a few Russian 

 references. A project of this type and magnitude naturally 

 encourages some errors to creep in, so I expect that there 



