Götte combats the statement that the idea of death necessarily implies the existence of a corpse. Hence he maintains that the cellular sac which is left after the extrusion of the reproductive cells among the Orthonectides, and which ultimately dies, is not a corpse; ‘for it does not represent the whole organism, any more than the isolated ectoderm of any other Heteroplastid’ (l. c., p. 48). But it is only a popular notion that a corpse must represent the entire organism. In cases of violent death this idea is correct, because then the reproductive cells are also killed. But as soon as we recognise that the reproductive cells on the one side, and the somatic cells on the other, form respectively the immortal and mortal parts of the Metazoan organism, then we must acknowledge that only the latter,—that is, the _soma_ without the reproductive cells,—suffers natural death. The fact that all the reproductive cells have not left the body (as sometimes happens) before natural death takes place, does not affect this conception. Among insects, for instance, it may happen that natural death occurs before all the reproductive cells have matured, and these latter then die with the _soma_. But this does not make any difference to their potential immortality, any more than it modifies the scientific conception of a corpse. The idea of natural death involves that of a corpse, which consists of the _soma_, and when the latter happens to contain reproductive cells, these do not succumb to a natural death, which can never apply to them, but to an accidental death. They are killed by the death of the _soma_ just as they might be killed by any other accidental cause of death. The scientific conception of a corpse is not affected, whether the dead _soma_ remains whole for some time, or falls to pieces at once. I cannot therefore agree with Götte when he denies that an Orthonectid possesses ‘the possibility of becoming a corpse’ (in his sense of the word) because ‘its death consists in the dissolution of the structure of the organism.’ When the young of the Rhabdites form of _Ascaris nigrovenosa_ bore through the body-walls of their parent, cause it to disintegrate and finally devour it, the whole organism disappears, and it would be difficult to say whether a corpse exists in the popular sense of the word. But, scientifically speaking, there is certainly a corpse; the real _soma_ of the animal dies, and this, however subdivided, must be considered as a corpse. The fact that natural death is so difficult to define without any accurate conception of what is meant by a corpse, proves the necessity for arriving at a scientific idea as to the meaning of the latter. There is no death without a corpse—whether the latter be small or large, whole or in pieces.