922 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
A crucial test of the present theory thus suggests itself. Since the 
reproductive organs are simply, as every morphologist knows, 
shortened branch-structures, we should predict that the cell from 
the segmentation of which the antheridium is derived must corre- 
spond in position to a nodal cell ( i.e ., he based upon an internode), 
while the corresponding essentially female cell or ovum must he 
internodal or apical in origin (i.e., based upon a node). It is there- 
fore not a little noteworthy that an examination alike of classical 
figures and fresh specimens will show that this imperfect homology, 
hut perfect physiological correspondence, is invariably the fact. 
(4) Similarly over a larger area, if we take a general survey of 
male and female forms, noting the distinctions of their form, func- 
tion, and general habit of life, it will be seen that the males are upon 
the whole smaller, more active, with higher temperature, shorter 
life, &c., than the more vegetative, nutritive, and conservative 
females — the apparent exceptions presented among the higher 
animals being readily explained when we hear in mind the larger 
development of the male muscular system necessitated by the excep- 
tional stress of external activities thrown on the male during the 
period of incubation or pregnancy, &c. Rejecting theories of 
“inherent” maleness or femaleness, it is yet evident that there 
must be some cause giving a bias to the general life, — some influence 
saturating the whole organism, — in fact, some predominant proto- 
plasmic diathesis. An analysis of the differences in detail 
suggests the previous conclusion that the female is the outcome 
of preponderant anabolism, and the male of equally emphatic 
katabolism. 
(5) An induction over another wide series of observations also 
confirms the result already reached. I refer to the researches on 
the determination of sex,* which, though incomplete, and in many 
cases divergent, have yet led to a few results which may be con- 
sidered as fairly well established. Thus, when the male parent is 
older than the female, when it is in its physiological prime, when 
the sperms meeting the ova are young and fresh, when the con- 
ditions of nutrition and environment both for parent and offspring 
are defective or unfavourable, the offspring is likely to be male. On 
* See “ Sex,” Ency. Brit. 
