324 OWEN'S POSITION IN 



the autonomous proliferation of true females, but 

 for the production of progeny by organisms which 

 are not really female, and the vestalship of which 

 is therefore physically indefeasible. In fact, it is 

 strictly applicable only to a comparatively few 

 cases among insects and Crustacea. And even 

 here, the queen-bee, under ordinary circum- 

 stances, would have to be excluded. The father- 

 less drones are, usually, not merely produced by a 

 true female ; but she is already mother, in the 

 ordinary sense, of thousands of daughters. 



But questions of names are of no particular 

 importance. We know what the processes de- 

 noted by the term ' Parthenogenesis ' are ; and 

 the point is to ascertain how far Owen's work 

 contributed to a better knowledge of them ; 

 or to that construction of an explanation of 

 the phenomena which is the end of investigation. 



With respect to the first point, the work on 

 ' Parthenogenesis ' contains no addition, that I am 

 aware of, to the common stock of observed facts. 

 In truth, the great majority of the subjects of 

 these processes are either the smaller insects and 

 Crustacea, which lay out of Owen's range of study ; 

 or the marine invertebrates, which were, in those 

 days, hardly accessible to any but persons who 

 lived on, or by, the sea. Moreover, the investiga- 

 tion lay eminently in the province of the histo- 

 logical microscopist, in which Owen was less at 

 home than elsewhere. 



