rinthians
recommended to our notice by Butler. In fact they seem to ignore all but
the lower or vegetable characters when dealing with psychology from the
chemico-physical point of view.

Finally, we come again to the fatal and fundamental defect of this as of
other "explanations"; it is an explanation "_within the system_," and
therefore unphilosophical in so far as it fails to explain the facts
through their ultimate or deepest reasons.

A large part of Loeb's book is devoted to a description of the author's
remarkable experiments in artificial parthenogenesis, and an attempt to
show that they offer a complete explanation. Sir William Tilden, one of
the greatest living authorities on organic chemistry, tells us that "too
much has been made of the curious observations of J. Loeb and others";
and he definitely states that when we consider "the propagation of the
animal races by the sexual process ... there can be no fear of
contradiction in the statement that in the whole range of physical and
chemical phenomena there is no ground for even a suggestion of an
explanation." Behind this pronouncement of an expert, one might well
shelter oneself; but the question under consideration merits a little
further treatment. The reproduction of kind, though usually a bi-sexual
process, may, however, normally in rare cases be uni-sexual, and this
process is known as Parthenogenesis. Even in human beings certain
tumours of the sex-glands, known as teratomata, very rare in women and
even rarer, if ever existent, in men, have been claimed as examples of
attempts at parthenogenesis, and so far no better explanation is
available.

Now Loeb and others have succeeded in certain forms--even in a
vertebrate like the frog--in inducing development in unimpregnated ova.
The evidence for all these things is still slender; but we will content
ourselves with noting that point and passing on to the consideration of
the phenomena and the claims put forward in connection with them. We
find the task of unravelling the writer's meaning rendered more
difficult by a certain confusion in his use of terms, since
fertilisation, _i.e._ syngamy--the union of the different sex
products--seems to be confused with segmentation, _i.e._ germination;
and this confusion is accentuated by the claim that "the main effect of
the spermatozoon in inducing the development of the egg consists in an
alteration in the surface of the latter which is apparently of the
natu