On the Phenomena of Reproduction in 
Animals and Plants. 
Antithetic Alternation of Generations. 
BY 
J. BEARD, D.Sc. 
Lecturer on Comparative Embryology , University of Edinburgh. 
A RECENT number of the Annals of Botany contains 
Strasburger s conclusions on ‘ the periodic reduction of 
the chromosomes in living organisms’ 1 . The paper, though 
largely based on facts of plant-morphology, is not without its 
special significance to the zoologist and animal morphologist. 
In the zoological world Strasburger’s statements appear to 
have created more unrest than satisfaction, and they have 
already led to an elaborate and somewhat ingenious criticism 2 
from the pen of V. Haecker 3 . And naturally so, even though 
it should subsequently become apparent that in this, as in so 
many other cases, Strasburger was mainly in the right in his 
1 Ann. of Botany, Vol. viii, 1894, pp. 281-316. 
2 Haecker, V., The reduction of the chromosomes in the sexual cells, Ann. of 
Botany, Vol. ix, 1895, pp. 95-101. 
3 Haecker’s objections are certainly weighty ones, and are only rendered in some 
respects nugatory by the acceptance of a very different view of the nature of animal 
development from that hitherto adopted. 
f Annals of Botany, Vol. IX. No. XXXV. September, 1895.] 
