VI 



ON THE HISTORY OF THE EARLIER EXPERIMENTS ON 

 ARTIFICIAL PARTHENOGENESIS 



The observations upon the natural parthenogenesis of 

 Bombyx mori were the starting-point for investigations upon 

 artificial parthenogenesis. In the year 1847 a French author, 

 Boursier, stated "that he had placed a female silkworm moth, 

 which had not paired with a male, first in the sunlight and then 

 in the shade, where (in both cases) it had laid many eggs. 

 Caterpillars had been produced from each of those eggs laid 

 in the sunlight."' 



Von Siebold comments upon this: "Since in the foregoing 

 cases nobody attributed the fertilization of the eggs to the 

 influence of the light and warmth of the sun, as Boursier has 

 done, one cannot abstain from regarding this phenomenon as a 

 case of parthenogenesis." Considering the above-mentioned 

 observation of Barth616my upon the difference in behavior of 

 the summer and winter eggs, and also the theoretical results 

 of the investigations upon artificial parthenogenesis to be 

 mentioned later, it is a priori not impossible that the tempera- 

 ture to which the newly laid egg of Bombyx mori is exposed 

 may be of importance for its development. 



In the year 1886, Tichomiroff^ published a short note on 

 "Artificial Parthenogenesis in Insects," the object of which was 

 to lend fresh support to the work of Herold and von Siebold 

 upon natural parthenogenesis in the silkworm. "It has long 

 been known that the eggs of Bombyx mori can develop partheno- 

 genetically; yet one is always hearing doubts expressed about 



' Von Siebold, Wahre Parthenogenese, p. 126, Leipzig, 1856. 



-A. TichomirofI, "Die Iriiustliche Parthenogenese bei Inselrten," Arch. f. 

 Anat. u. Physiol., Physiol. Abt., 1886, Suppl., p. 35; Zoologiecher Anzeiger, XXV, 

 386, 1902. 



47 



