No. 505] 



NOTES AND LITERATURE 



61 



It is a matter of some interest that Chambers maintains that 

 the cells of large and small individuals developed from eggs of 

 uniform diameter are not of different but of the same size. 

 Thus he leads us to believe, and in fact he states it explicitly 

 at the close of his paper, that the principal factor determining 

 the size of cells of an animal is the initial size of the egg from 

 which it developed. 



Without giving mention to some objections to this general con- 

 clusion, which might be made on the basis of Chambers' own 

 experiments, I wish to point out that the figures of cells given 

 in the text do not carry conviction, and, so far as I was able to 

 make out, they do not bear out Chambers' contention. In the 

 drawings of cells of blood-corpuscles, epidermis and rectum, 

 which Chambers thinks to be of equal size, I find on careful ex- 

 amination that the cells are different. Of course, actual meas- 

 urements of the cells could make this matter clear, but, un- 

 fortunately, there are no measurements given in the paper. 



The introduction to the paper contains a resume of a few 

 works in one way or another related to the problem. This ivsumc 

 of facts so widely scattered throughout the literature will doubt- 

 less be found useful. 



The third part of the paper is devoted chiefly to extensive 

 theoretical considerations and does not therefore come within 

 the scope of the present review. 



In conclusion I should like to call attention to some defects 

 of a technical character, which obscure the meaning of the 

 text and frequently confuse the reader. In the explana- 

 tion to Fig. 1 it is said, for instance, that I marks a culture 

 developed from eggs of similar size, and II marks those de- 



and Aa in text Fig. 2. As a matter of fact this reference was 

 found to apply to Fig. a and a a in the Text-fig. 5. In Table 

 V in the third column the date of spawning is given as June 5, 

 and the date of the first examination of the developing embryos 



