18 METAMORPHOSES OF MAN 



fecundated eggs of mammalia also disappear. Not 

 only in the highest, but in the lowest member of the 

 animal series, the object of the male element is to 

 bestow, or rather to reveal, a vitality which already 

 exists within the egg, and which exhibits itself by 

 appreciable phenomena. Its function is but to regulate 

 the employment of this vital force, so as to ensure 

 its duration. Let us bear this important fact in 

 mind now, and hereafter we shall be able to form 

 an estimate of its value. 



After the changes of which we have spoken, and 

 whether the egg be impregnated or not,* there is 

 formed on the surface of the modified yolk, in Hermella 

 and Teredo, a kind of papilla, from which, as though 

 they had been forced from the interior, one or two 

 transparent globules make their escape. What is the 

 real office of these globules ? We know not. Already 

 they have been observed in the egg of the rabbit, by 

 Barry, BischofF, and Pouchet ; in that of the bitch, by 

 Bischoff ; and in that of the triton, by Wharton Jones ; 

 and they will be found in all probability in the other 

 Mammalia, Reptiles, and Fishes. Vertebrata, Annu- 

 losa, and Mollusca resemble each other in this parti- 

 cular also.f 



When the egg has been impregnated, the ex- 



* M. Lacaze chi Thiers has observed the expulsion of the trans- 

 parent globule from the unimpregnated egg of Acephala. — (Histoire 

 du Dentale, Paris, 1858.) This fact is of importance, in the pre- 

 sence of theories deduced from the penetration of the spermatozoids 

 into the egg. 



f According to the researches recently communicated to the 

 Academy by M. Ch. Eobin, the globules referred to, are absent in 

 certain diptera, the earlier stages of whose development present 

 many other phenomena equally exceptional and strange. 



