The San Francisco call., 1898-02-20

leStS ana demonstrated the trutn or their rumored opinions. Indeed, such a SubStratum of rulnored knowledge may be found beneath many great dis coverieS. And in this particular case it is not alone the cattle breeders but Q large number of physicians everywhere who have held, as a provisional belief, theory of sex which is practically that now formulated definitely by Professor Schenck. There is at least one New York physician, for example. who has long been accustomed to point out the fact that among families of his &C., quaintance male offspring preponderate where the mother noticeably exceeds the father in physical vigor or vitality; girl children where the father is pro- nouncedly the more vigorous
 He has shown, further, that in a family where boys have been the sole offspring, girl may be born during period when the father had suffered from long-continued depression of health. He has even claimed to have some success in predicating the sex of unborn children by applying this test. But as he had made no detailed publi- cation of his observations, his theory takes nothing from the precedence of Professor Schenck. It does, however, tend to strengthen confidence in the Germans alleged discovery that other independent observers had reached SOIleWHdC similar cOncIuS1OnS.
 But there is another and a much stronger reason for supposing that the new claims may have some validity. Thus, it is we'll known that certain bac- ter1a will go on producing their kind by the splitting up of each individual to form two, continuing this process over and over so long as an abundance of food is supplied and the temperature is uniform; but that when food be- comes scarce or the temperature unfa- vorable Gin other words, when nutri- tion Is 1nterfered with), at once this form of reproduction ceases, and each cell, instead of dividing to form two, develops within itself a colony of off, spring in the form of spores, which can rest indefinitely before going on to de- velopment. Here it would be too much, perhaps, to say that sex Is involved; yet, beyond question, the spores are a. different order of offspring from the ones ordinarily produced by division.
 A more unequivocal example of a similar kind is furnished by the aphideS or plant lice The female of this interesting species may, and us- ally does, produce series of off spring all of one sex throughout almost her entire life; and only toward the approach of winter, when food begins to be scarce, does she produce offspring of the other sex. Here, clearly, the
  sex is unequivocal.
 There is an impression abroad that the case of the bee is another instance in point. but this is a mistake. It is quite true that the worker bees may by forced feeding determine that certain larva shall become a queen, whereas without such forced breedin;, that larva would have been merely a worker; but 1t is also true that all worker bees are of the female sex. They are simple abortive queens; the males of the hives being drones. Yet the case of the bee has it's importance in this connection after all, for the worker bee, even though female. is incapable of producing offspring unless put through the course of forced feed ing while in the larval state, that will alone develop her into queen.
 In all these cases of real or alleged predetermination of sex, it will be ob- served, the final settlement of the question for each particular individual is supposed to be effected immediately on the union of the male and female elements, giving vitality to the new organism. It is an open question, however, whether such final determine tion of sex really takes place so early. There are biologists who hold that in its earliest stages the organism is with out sex, or, perhaps better that it Is bl-seXual. But when one reflects that all the potentialities of the male par ent have been transmitted through the germ cell it is difficult to believe that any fortuitous later occurrences can change the sex of the offspring.
 In such a case as that of the fish, where the germ cell finds the egg cell at the bottom of river, and where neither parent afterward comes near the developing young, one can hardly doubt that the sex is determined by the balance of vitalities of each pair of germ cells and ova, at the moment of their union, and not by any subsequent vicissitudeS. And if this be true of the fish, such is the harmony of vital ac- tion throughout nature, one cannot doubt that it holds equally true of every other organism. So clear does this seem that one feels that Professor Schenck must be misunderstood in those reports which have stated that he bases his claims on the nutrition of the female after conception. If lis theory has any validity at all it must surely be based on the vitality supplied the germ cells and egg cells by the nutrition of the parents, prior to con- ception, not afterward.
 Without entering into- exhaustive dis cussion of the matter, it may not be amiss to call attention to one familiar feature regarding the average sex of large masses of population, which the new theory of sex in some measure ex- plains. It is we'll known to statisticians that during times of war the average percentage of male births incroa~as among the warning nations. During the half decade, 1S60-65. for example, more than the proportionate number of boys were born in the United States
 The theory that nutrition influences sex. would explain this as due to the fact that on an average, the fathers of the country were more reduced in physical vitality by the physical vicis- situdes of war ths were the mothers.