1887] The Significance of Sex. 223 
Then Whitmann was enabled to give what we consider as 
the true theory of the polar globules,—viz., that they represent 
an asexual generation of cells that once were functional. 
Beneden, Minot, and Balfour carried this view so far as to say 
that the polar globules are male cells. Thus, that every cell is 
hermaphrodite, having male and female plasmas, and that the 
cells become sexed by extruding one of these plasmas. It can 
then no longer develop until it has fused with a cell containing 
_ plasma opposite in character to itself. The absence of polar 
globules in any instance does not disprove the theory, for this 
plasm may be gotten rid of in many different ways. But this 
theory has lately received its death-blow by the discovery of 
polar globules in parthenogenetic ova. Strasburger has modi- 
fied the theory by his idea that the nucleo-hyaloplasm is primary 
idioplasm, while the cytohyaloplasm is secondary; the former is 
conservative, the latter is adaptive. Cell phenomena are due to a 
dynamic interaction of the two. Two nuclei may be alike, but 
because the cytoplasms differ the cells will develop in a different 
manner. Cells become sexually mature, therefore, by getting rid, 
by division or any other way, of certain constituents in the cyto- 
plasm.? Weismann says that these constituents are histogenic 
plasm,—z.¢., plasm which belongs to the cell as a cell,—and when 
this is lost then the plasm, which represents the generation of 
tissue-cells to come from the segmenting egg, ‘may develop. A 
view similar in some respects was advocated by Robin in 1875. 
It is strange how many different bodies, having not the slight- 
est homology, have been appealed to to prove the sexual nature 
of protoplasm. Every sort of paranucleus has been worked into 
line with this theory. We have already adverted to the fact that 
paranuclei are themselves very different bodies. Thus, in Fig. 
49, Gaule’s paranucleus can be homologous only with the germi- 
nal dot of the (parthenogenetic) ovum; for from it the new cell 
develops, while the old nucleus goes to the ground. Besides 
paranuclei other things have been supposed to represent the lost 
sexed protoplasm, such as canal-cells, perivitelline excretions, 
_ 1 Bütschli said the polar globules are to be considered as the first stages of de- 
_ The idea of Fol is that certain substances injurious to further development must 
* be excreted. This is only a general statement of the fact that cells must i 
a certain cycle of work before they are sexually mature, most commonly a certain 
number of divisions. 
