5o8 The American Naturalist. [June, 
power is acquired. In the vegetable world there has, from the 
first, been a tendency to form plates, filaments, and later col- 
umns of cell aggregates, instead of the blastula form of animal 
types. Sexuality, or the development of male and female ele- 
ments, therefore, has a meaning, fraught with consequences and 
promises which have culminated in the most wonderful morpho- 
logical and adaptive specialization, and probably in definite 
ways, which might have been predicted had all the conditions 
N. B— Finally, it is necessary to point out here that these views have little in 
may produce an ovum, as he supposes, how it is possible to conceive that processes 
down of protoplasm into simpler compounds, could result in the production of male- 
cells, I utterly fail to comprehend. That growth is accompanied by katabolism 
»u„„„ ;. „„ ,,„„u. u... . , . .. . , . . j^.^j^ karyokine- 
the enfeeblement of" the "c 
itself in spermatogenesis is merely an exhibition of prepond( 
.u;»u „.._.„_..,.:_.,.., ,, ... ,. produced, St 
Six 
esitatingly pronounced inadequate and unfounded 
the molecular processes by which protoplasm is buill 
The fundamental error lies in confounding ordinary physiological procei 
special modes of the manifestation of karyokinesis, and sim ' ' 
e into smau cells, such as those produced from spermo 
ul>ted if the equivalency sought to be established is anythi 
phologically homologous 
PHYSIOLOGY.^ 
Gaskell's Work. — The most important recent work on 
the physiology of peripheral nerves, is that of Dr. W. H. Gas- 
kell, of Cambridge, which has occupied him during the past 
ten years.' Begun as a contribution to cardiac physiology, it 
has extended itself much beyond this, and bids fair to alter 
fundamentally our conceptions of the morphological and 
Br n Mawr'^ pT^""^"* '^ ^"^''^"^ ^^ ^^' ^'^'^"'^ S. Lee, Bryn Mawr College, 
* Gaskell's chief articles are published as follows— 
Phil. Trans. 1882. p. 993. 
Journal of Physiology, Vol. IV. p. 43. 
» .'.' ,Y°j-,y- p- 362. 
lirurgical Transactio 
Journal of Physiology. VoT.^: 
