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W. M. Wheeler 
logist may well deserve the blame — not to say contempt — of those 
who deal witli tbe wide and fundamental questions of Variation 
when he has to resort to such assumptions as this »to bolster iip an 
argument which is otherwise iintenable«. 
5) It is interesting to note that Beard has spent no time looking 
for those hermaphrodites which bave fewer than 93 sections, and 
still such must exist if bis hypothesis is to be accepted. Where are 
they? Beard has taken the pains at pag. 402 to draw np a table 
to show that the hermaphrodites of M. glahrum are far more abun- 
dant than the males. If this is the case — and again I do not 
doubt the fact — we should expect to find at least as many herma- 
phrodites as males among the stages of 66—93 sections. But no 
one has ever seen hermaphrodites of this size, and the reason is very 
simple: the hermaphrodites of this size are in the protan- 
dric stage ! 
Beard Claims that the » complemental males (f, if really only 
young hermaphrodites. »ought to be more abundant than is actually 
the case«, I cannot see how this must follow. The life of the 
functional hermaphrodite is in all probability much longer than that 
of the protandric stage. Heuce, other conditions being equalj the 
number of surviviug hermaphrodites at any given time must be 
greater than the number of protandric young. This nunierical ratio of 
adults to young even in the breeding season undoubtedly obtains in 
many animals which produce but few young or when, as in para- 
sites like the Myzostomes, the chances of the survival of the young 
beyond the earliest stages are comparatively small. 
6) Beard records the following Observation, which agrees with 
Prouho's Observation on M. alatum (see pag. 243). He says (pag. 402) : 
»Sometimes a small form was found seated on the side wall, instead 
of on the back of a large hermaphrodite, and such specimens, which 
thus did not occupy the normal position of a male, in vari ab ly 
turned out to be hermaphrodite.« Considered carefully this Obser- 
vation teils against Beard's hypothesis, for what are these young 
hermaphrodites doing on the old ones? Certainly the same cause 
which induces the so-called males to attach themselves to the large 
specimens will explain the presence of the young hermaphrodites 
in a similar Situation ^. Hence there is not even a difference in at- 
1 I cannot attacli any importance to the difference between the side and 
the »normal« position of the small individnals, since these can shift their posi- 
tions at will. 
