a 
224 The Significance of Sex. [March 
synergid-cells, follicle-cells, nutritive cells, seminal granules, “ re- 
mains” (“ Rest”) of protoplasm in spore formations, and, in fact, 
any sort of excretion and secretion. Trouble arises in explain- 
ing cases where more than one of these modes coexist. Thus, 
Sabatier holds that in gametogenesis one cell buds off a number 
of cells, which become nutritive to the mother-cell, in the ovary ; 
while in the testes the daughter-cells develop to spermatozoa at 
the expense of the mother-cell. Such a theory as this cannot 
possibly be universally applied, and does not explain polar glob- 
ules. Our knowledge of sex has developed by two steps more. 
Beneden showed in ascaris that the two pronuclei are just alike, 
each containing two loops that are placed in order in one equa- 
torial plate in the zygote, and split as in ordinary karyokinesis, to 
furnish the two daughter-nuclei. (See Fig. 124, 0.) In the latter 
the four loops reappear as a result of the process of reconstruc- 
tion, so that Beneden thought that each daughter-nucleus had still 
two male and two female loops; and thus every cell of the body 
may be considered hermaphrodite, having the chromatins of the 
two sexes in morphologically distinct structures; and finally, 
when any cell becomes sexually mature, all that happens is a 
cell-division at right angles to the ordinary cell-division, thus 
separating the male from the female chromatin. But this theory 
is very faulty, for in the first place the phenomena of karyoki- 
nesis have as one object the mixture of the chromatins, and we 
know that this is accomplished in one phase or other somewhere 
between two successive divisions. Then, secondly, the chroma- 
tin derived from the spermatozoon possesses the characters of its 
ancestry, both: male and female; if this be lost the characters 
which fertilization has bestowed are lost; and as this loss occurs 
with every generation, how could there ever be an accumulation 
of characters?* Only through the idea that chromatin is sexed 
can such grave errors as this arise. Platner (see Fig. 126) fur- 
nished an important contribution when he showed that in Arion 
the number of microsomata derived from the male pronucleus is 
less than a fourth as great as that of the microsomata in the 
female pronucleus. Thus the two pronuclei bear the relation of 
1 Strasburger holds that the contributions of the ancestors in each fertilization 
eae ae in Set ports: of the mitom: Roux, in a somewhat analogous 
ponds oh a eee ee o 
re 
