Die Lösung des Problems der Urzeugung (Archigonia, Generatio spontanea)

Abstract

DR. KUCKUCK made a mixture of gelatine, peptone, asparagin, glycerine, and sea-water, boiled it for an hour, put it in a sterilised vessel, and added a little chloride of barium, which brought about ionisation. The outcome was the formation of minute bodies like protozoa, which show “nutrition, growth, reproduction (segmentation), inheritance, movement (rotation), and form cell-groups (cœnobia of Haeckel), which resemble animal morulæ.” Barium chloride produces similar morulas in fresh white of egg and in yolk of egg. Drops of natrium nucleinecum (Merck), allowed to fall on the surface of the gelatine-peptone-aspara-gin-glycerine-sea-salt mixture, produce rotating corpuscles, which form loose colonies. The author gives very interesting and striking figures, some drawn, some from photographs, of his artificial cells and cellcolonies. The figures drawn from the artificial morulas would pass muster in a text-book of embryology; the cell-outlines are sharply defined, and each cell has a beautiful nucleus. It seems to us that these and similar experiments would be more interesting, if less were proved. Die Lösung des Problems der Urzeugung (Archigonia, Generatio spontanea). By Martin Kuckuck. Pp. vii + 83; with 34 figs, and one table. (Leipzig: Barth,1907.) Price 3 marks.