April 28, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



667 



in plants. All other cells of the animal con- 

 stitute a generation comparable with the sporo- 

 phytic generation in plants, the fertilized egg 

 being the first cell of this series." 



In the diagrams employed in the exposition 

 of his theory he indicates that the animal egg 

 by itself and each spermatozoid is comparable 

 to a plant gametophyte. His statements are 

 not consistent, not in accordance with the facts 

 or even with his figures, and it appears that 

 just where he wishes to draw the homology is 

 not quite clear in his own mind. 



Our knowledge of animal phylogeny affords 

 no evidence that the gametes, with their re- 

 duced number of chromosomes, are vestigial 

 individuals which at one time in their history 

 lived independent of or apart from the ani- 

 mal body. They do not constitute and there 

 is no evidence that they ever have constituted, 

 a generation in the life-history of any animal 

 organism. If amphimixis occurs in the life- 

 history of an organism, a reducing division 

 must also occur. The mechanism of reduction 

 seems, in general, to be bound up in two 

 successive mitoses. That the cytological proc- 

 esses of reduction in plants and animals 

 closely approximate a common plan does, by 

 no means, justify the conclusion that the 

 products are of the same morphological value 

 in the life-cycles of each. 



Chamberlain says : " To me the comparison 

 seems so obvious that I can explain the pre- 

 vious absence of a theory of alternation of 

 generations in animals only by the fact that 

 the gamete-bearing generation is extremely 

 reduced and is not approached by any gradual 

 series as in plants. * * * I do not claim 

 any acquaintance with zoological literature 

 further than a reading of the latest edition of 

 Wilson's ' The Cell in Development and In- 

 heritance.' Were there any theories as to 

 alternation of generations in animals, doubt- 

 less they would have been thoroughly discussed 

 in that book." 



That zoologists recognize an alternation of 

 generations in the Hydrozoa and Scyphozoa 

 is a common statement of their text-books. 

 That a theory of antithetic alternation of gen- 

 erations in the life-histories of animals has 

 been propounded by certain zoologists, Beard 



and Murray,* does not require a knowledge of 

 zoological literature to determine, for it oc- 

 cupies a conspicuous place in a prominent 

 botanical journal as well. 



In the course of their discussion Beard and 

 Murray write : " When one seeks in the higher 

 animals for an equivalent of the alternation 

 of generations in plants in the light of recent 

 work on the reducing division of spore-forma- 

 tion, such a morphological mark would only 

 be found in the maturation of the egg and in 

 spermatogenesis. If the process were here a 

 spore-formation, the whole metazoan body, in 

 which it took place, would represent the asex- 

 ual generation, and any apparent alternation 

 of generations in the life-cycle would be 

 homologous in character, not antithetic." 



In speaking of the reduction of chromo- 

 somes in the oogenesis of Fucus, Farmer and 

 Williamsf call attention to this same analogy 

 in the following sentences : " Thus Fucus, in 

 this respect, approximates more closely to the 

 type of animal oogenesis than to that which 

 obtains in those higher plants in which the 

 details of chromosome reduction have been fol- 

 lowed out. Regarded from the standpoint of 

 the number of its chromosomes, the Fucus- 

 plant resembles the sporophyte of the higher 

 plants, whilst the gametophyte of the latter, 

 with its reduced number of chromosomes, finds 

 its analogue merely in the maturing sexual 

 cells of Fucus." Harold L. Lyon. 



University of Minnesota. 



science and the newspapers. 

 To THE Editor of Science: Recently three 

 Chicago newspapers (the Record-Herald, the 

 Tribune and the Chronicle) published, with- 

 out our knowledge or consent, an alleged ac- 

 count of experiments communicated by us to 

 a meeting of physiologists. It is needless to 

 state that this account was quite misleading. 

 We at once sent the enclosed letter to the 

 papers in question. Only one of them (the 

 Record-Herald) pursued the fair and manly- 

 course of publishing it. The Trihune did not 

 deign even to acknowledge receipt of our let- 



* Anat. Anzeiger, 11: 234-255. Ann. of Botany, 

 9: 441-468. 



\ Ann. of Botany, 10: 470-487. 



