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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. L 



mistakably, less storage and high storage pertain respec- 

 tively to the male- and female-producing germs. Un- 

 mistakably, our procedure— connected with generic 

 cross, season and overwork— delivers males from the 

 smaller storages in the earlier eggs. Unmistakably, these 

 procedures raise the storage in all of the later eggs, and 

 unfailingly we then find that these eggs yield only, or al- 

 most exclusively, females. And if we eliminate the factor 

 of wide— or generic— cross and mate the female with 

 one of her own species, then we see that the production 

 of males and females coincides from the first with two 

 sizes of eggs in the clutch— males from the smaller first, 

 female from the larger second. Only after overwork 

 and season have raised the storage value of the eggs, is 

 this situation, in such a mating, seriously disturbed. And 

 the disturbance— associated with an increase in the stor- 

 age metabolism of all the eggs,— delivers, as before, an 

 excess of female offspring. 



The progressive increase in storage capacity of the eggs 

 during the season — under overwork — is to be interpreted 

 as a decrease in the oxidizing capacity of these same eggs. 

 Living cells in general dispose of ingested food material 

 by storing it, or by burning it. The products of the ox- 

 idation are removable and do not serve to increase the 

 bulk of the cell. Likewise the low-storage capacity of the 

 male-producing eggs as compared with the high-storage 

 capacity of female-producing eggs is therefore an index 

 of higher oxidizing capacity of the male-producing eggs 

 as compared with the female-producing eggs. 



The fifth correlation relates to the percentage of water 

 in the eggs of spring and autumn, and in the two eggs of 

 the clutch. These figures for one series of analyses are 

 given on the chart (3) last examined. They show a 

 higher water content for the eggs of the spring (male- 

 producers) as compared with the eggs of autumn (female- 

 producers) ; indeed, each pair of eggs from the first of 

 the season onward has a slightly higher moisture value 

 than the pair that follows it. The analyses further show 

 a higher percentage of water in the first egg of the clutch 



