44 2 Beard. — Reproduction in Animals and Plants. 
contentions so far as these relate to plants. How could it be 
otherwise ? Is not the zoologist as such concerned with 
processes in which an antithetic alternation of generations 
is only conspicuous by its absence? How then shall he of 
all men accept an explanation of the meaning and nature 
of a process in plants, when to what is, to all appearance, 
the corresponding phenomenon in animal reproduction the 
interpretation offered would seem totally incapable of appli- 
cation ? 
The zoologist in general, having as little belief in the 
occurrence of spore-formation in animals as in an antithetic 
alternation of generations, and being limited by a blind 
acceptance of recapitulation with ‘ direct development ’ or by 
a simple negation of any such theory, is hardly to be expected 
to admit that the botanists may have obtained a deeper in- 
sight into the phenomena of plant-development than he 
believes himself to have of those of animal-reproduction. 
Haecker speaks in his behalf with no uncertain note. An 
explanation which does not fit in with the zoological facts is 
to Haecker’s mind possibly dependent on a ‘ misinterpretation 
of the results obtained by the botanists,’ and he seems to 
think it more fitting that these investigators should set their 
house in order in the light of the newer zoological facts. 
Apparently it does not occur to him that the something 
lacking to complete agreement might lie at the door of the 
zoologist himself. 
The fundamental laws and principles of animal reproduc- 
tion are practically assumed to be less open to emendation 
and repeal than those of plant-development. But is this 
really the case? What we are taught when we begin our 
zoological studies, provided it be contained in the text-books 
as well as in the professor’s lectures, becomes almost of the 
nature of a superstition, and the essence of such is, as Huxley 
has, I think, remarked, that it is accepted on faith without 
evidence. 
In zoological research there is also a fatal tendency to look 
upon all previous results, in so far as they are of general 
