HEREDITY AND MEMORY 



Writing in the middle of the xviith cen- 

 tury on " the efficient cause of the chicken," 

 William Harvey of Gains College in this 

 university quaintly remarked: "Although it 

 be a known thing subscribed by all ...that the 

 egge is produced by the cock and henne, and 

 the chicken out of the egge, yet neither the 

 schools of physicians nor Aristotle's discern- 

 ing brain have disclosed the manner how the 

 seed doth mint and coin the chicken out of 

 the egge." " How much nearer a disclosure," 

 asks a writer who quotes this passage, "are 

 we to-day ?...0n the whole we have [still] to 

 confess that we do not know the secret of 

 development, which is part of the larger 

 secret of life itself ^" 



^ J. Arthur Thomson, Heredity, 1908, p. 416. 



