More Science from an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
More Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
"on their own," but that they do not more frequently do so. It must be
remembered that the "germination" and development of unfertilised
eggs, even when the whole range of animals and plants is taken into
account (for plants also are reproduced by single cells identical in
character with the egg-cells and sperm-cells of animals), that is to
say, the existence of "parthenogenesis" as a natural, regularly
recurring process, is exceptional. We must distinguish cases in which
it regularly occurs as part of the life-history of an animal or plant
from cases in which it has been successfully brought about by
experimental "artificial" methods designed by man. The plant-lice
"naturally" reproduce through the summer by unfertilised eggs
producing only females, but in the first cold of autumn males are
hatched from some of the eggs, and the eggs of this generation are
fertilised and bide through the winter, hatching in the following
spring. Some few moths and flies also reproduce naturally during
summer by unfertilised eggs, and the brine-shrimps and some other
fresh-water shrimps produce "fatherless" broods from their eggs,
sometimes for years in succession, until "one fine day" some males are
hatched, owing to what causes we do not know. The queen bee naturally
and regularly lays a certain number of unfertilised eggs, and these
produce, not females as do the unfertilised eggs of plant-lice, etc.,
but male bees--the drones--and it is only from such eggs that the
drones of bees are born. These are the chief cases of regular and
natural parthenogenesis, but there are others which might be
enumerated.
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