334 
OWEN’S POSITION IN 
the autonomous proliferation of true females, but 
for the production of progeny by organisms which 
are not really female, and the vestalship of which 
is therefore physically indefeasible. In fact, it is 
strictly applicable only to a comparatively few 
cases among insects and Crustacea. And even 
here, the queen-bee, under ordinary circum- 
stances, would have to be excluded. The father- 
less drones are, usually, not merely produced by a 
true female ; but she is already mother, in the 
ordinary sense, of thousands of daughters. 
But questions of names are of no particular 
importance. We know what the piocesses de- 
noted by the term ‘ Parthenogenesis ’ are ; and 
the point is to ascertain how far Owen’s work 
contributed to a better knowledge of them ; 
or to that construction of an explanation of 
the phenomena which is the end of investigation. 
With respect to the first point, the work on 
‘ Parthenogenesis ’ contains no adaition, that I am 
aware of, to the common stock of observed facts. 
In truth, the great majority of the subjects of 
these processes are either the smaller insects and 
Crustacea, which lay out of Owen’s range of study ; 
or the marine invertebrates, which were, in those 
days, hardly accessible to any but persons who 
lived on, or by, the sea. Moreover, the investiga- 
tion lay eminently in the province of the histo- 
logical microscopist, in which Owen was less at 
home than elsewhere. 
