54 GERM-CELL CYCLE IN ANIMALS 
becomes separated from the rest of the ovary and is 
forced by the movements of the larva into some other 
part of its body. Here it continues its growth and 
development at the expense of the tissues of the 
mother-larva. Not all of the odcytes (thirty-two 
in each ovary) complete their development, since 
usually only from five to seventeen young are 
produced by a single mother-larva. Those odcytes 
that do not perish pass through the stages described 
in the following paragraphs. 
Figure 13 represents the condition of an odcyte just 
before the initiation of the maturation processes. 
The nucleus, or germinal vesicle (g.v.), is eccentrically 
placed and nearer the anterior than the posterior 
end of the cell. The nurse chamber has greatly 
decreased in volume. 
The contents of the odcyte are not homogeneous, 
but several distinct regions can be distinguished. 
Near the nurse chamber is a body of cytoplasm 
evidently elaborated by the nurse cells, and at the 
posterior end is an accumulation which we may call 
the pole-plasm (pPl) and which is of particular 
interest since it is intimately associated with the 
formation of the primordial germ cell. 
The maturation division occurs soon after the 
stage just described has been attained. The ger- 
minal vesicle, which lies near the periphery of the 
odcyte, breaks down, and the chromatin contained 
within it becomes aggregated into about twenty 
chromosomes. Asa result of the maturation division 
(Fig. 14) a polar body (p.b) and the female pronucleus 
