Artificial parthenogenesis and fertilization / by Jacques Loeb... Originally tr. from the German by W. O. Redman King... supplemented and revised by the author.

  • Loeb, Jacques, 1859-1924.
Date:
[1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Artificial parthenogenesis and fertilization / by Jacques Loeb... Originally tr. from the German by W. O. Redman King... supplemented and revised by the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    on the other hand, those experiments are important in which the hypertonic solution remains ineffective in the ab- sence of oxygen, but regains its powers if oxygen be afterward admitted. The eggs of S. purpuratus were treated with butyric acid in the usual manner, and all formed membranes. These eggs were then divided between two flasks containing the same hypertonic solution. Through one flask bubbled a stream of oxygen, and through the other a stream of hydrogen, by means of which it had been previously freed from oxygen. The temperature was 14° C. After one hour the eggs were trans- ferred to normal sea-water (in contact with air). Practically all the eggs which had been in the oxygenated hypertonic sea- water developed into larvae, while only a small number of larvae, amounting to perhaps one-half of 1 per cent of the eggs, devel- oped from those eggs which had been in the hypertonic sea-water that was free from, or more strictly poor in, oxygen. The remaining eggs disintegrated in the manner characteristic of eggs that have undergone artificial membrane formation without exposure to hypertonic sea-water. I now wished to convince myself that the eggs which go to pieces after exposure to hyper- tonic sea-water that is free from or poor in oxygen do develop, if they are exposed afterward in the same hypertonic solution to the air. To this end not all of the eggs were removed after the conclusion of the above experiment from the hypertonic solution out of which the oxygen had been driven, but some of them were left in this hypertonic solution. This time, however, the latter was exposed to the air. At intervals of 14, 26, 36, 46, 56, and 116 minutes samples of the eggs were transferred to normal sea-water. The result is given in Table X. From this experiment we can with certainty draw the conclusion that the hypertonic solution in these experiments is effective only when it contains a sufficient quantity of free oxygen.