No. 438.] 



AMBL Y STOMA 



407 



and feeding to the maximum for several days (to which she 

 ascribes no other importance than giving the animals increased 

 strength). The animals were then brought immediately into 

 water sufficiently shallow to force them, for at least part of the 

 time to breathe air. In this latter condition the experimenter 

 complains again and again that it was next to impossible to induce 

 the Axolotls to take any food whatever. Thus in these experi- 

 ments, too, we have high feeding followed by practical starvation ; 

 and it seems that no control experiments were instituted to 

 determine what the effects of over and under nutrition might 

 have been with Axolotls still in an abundance of water. Yet 

 more interesting is it to note that even the varying degrees of 

 success and failure in inducing metamorphosis in these experiments 

 follow closely parallel to varying factors of nutrition, which factors 

 seem to have been wholly neglected in the final interpretation of 

 the results. Viz., as artificial methods of feeding were developed, 

 earthworms being made to crawl down the throats of the refrac- 

 tory larvae exposed to the air, it became proportionately difficult 



