Hertwig repeated Roux’s experiment and obtained results entirely
different from those of Roux. He injured one of the first two
blastomeres of the frog’s egg with a hot needle, or by means of a
galvanic current. Hertwig states that after the operation the egg turns
so that the uninjured part lies uppermost. This is owing, he thinks, to
the appearance of a blastula or of a gastrula cavity in the developing
part. The segmentation cavity is found in many cases surrounded by the
cells of the segmenting half (Fig. 62, _A_), but at other times at the
border between the new and the old parts. In still other cases the
cavity may lie eccentrically, and in some cases the floor of the cavity
may be bounded by the yolk substance of the injured half. An embryo
appears on the upper, uninjured part, though it is not, according to
Hertwig, a half-embryo, but a whole embryo, or at least one approaching
that condition (Fig. 62, _D_, _E_, _F_, _G_, _H_). It is shorter than
the normal embryo, and its posterior end is incomplete. When these
embryos are cut into sections, it is found that the part that has
developed corresponds to the dorsal part of a normal embryo, but the
ventral part is continuous with the yolk substance of the injured half
(Fig. 62, _B_, _C_, _J_, _K_). Hertwig interprets these embryos as forms
in which the yolk portion of the developing half, together with the
whole of the injured blastomere, represents a yolk mass that has not yet
been enclosed by the margin of the developing part.
In nearly all the embryos that Hertwig has described, the medullary
folds appear eccentrically on the developing half (Fig. 62, _D_, _F_,
_K_), and in some cases they may lie so far to one side that they are
situated almost at the edge; and the less development of one of the
folds makes the embryo appear almost like the hemi-embryos obtained by
Roux. In fact, one embryo seems to have been a true hemi-embryo.
Hertwig attributes the eccentric position of the embryo to the eccentric
position of the blastopore of an earlier stage, but he does not attempt
to account for the eccentricity of the latter.
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