676 Strassburger’s Theory of Generation. [November, 
thiead derived from the same ancestral pair are distributed 
m small fragments through the entire thread. If, then ac- 
cidentally several segments derived from the same progenitor 
aie brought together, they acquire a certain influence which 
can occasion in a given part of the organism a phenomenon 
of revei sion. The more remote the generations from which 
. ''ey aie denved the smaller are the segments, and the less 
is the probabihty of their manifestation. But Strassburger 
* e Naegeli, refers the ordinary phenomena of atavism’ 
which consists in the fa<5t that some given property overleaps 
one generation to reappear in the next,— not to the re-union 
0 segments of the nuclear thread, but to a latency of the 
phenomena in question. 3 
Both the sperm-nucleus and the ovum-nucleus unite the 
pioperties needful for the formation of both sexes. There 
are no morphological faCts known which could necessitate 
the assumption of a functional difference in the two coniu- 
gated cell-nuclei. The view that the specifically male ele- 
ments are previously expelled from the sperm-nucleus, and 
the specifically female elements from the ovum-nucleus, is 
lefuted by the circumstance that sexual attributes of the 
giandmother can. be transferred through the father to the 
f!- an ar a fK ght fu’ an f 5 . lnversel y> sexual peculiarities of the 
grandfather through the mother to the grandson. The in- 
fluences which lead to the development of one or the other 
sex may possibly a 61 upon the sexual products during their 
elaboration of the ancestral organism. The tendency to 
pioduce a given sex may be developed in the two conjugated 
cel l-nucki either in the same or in opposite directions, in 
ch latter case the stronger predominates. A perfect 
equilibrium of the tendencies of cell-nuclei having opposite 
directions is also possible, the result being the formation of 
a hermaphrodite. 
