The Fatherless Frog's Fate.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 10 April 1914, Page 8

The Fatherless Frog's Fate.

* This is a sad story—probably the saddest that ever echoed down the hall of a biological laboratory—and tins is saying a great deal, for every kind of scientific experiment is deeply set with just tragedies. It relates the death, premature and most lamented, of the only fatherless frog, probably,- this ancient world has ever known. If there ever was another it was an accident, and no human being ever knew about it. This was not an accident, but literally the fruit of long years of scientific research ; and that is why its death waa so great a loss. Of all the deep problems of life there has never berni any which has more deeply interested the human mind than the miracle of birth and the mystery of sex. 'But it is only within the last thirty or forty years that we have come to know anything very definite about them. First the microscope had to reveal, then establish, that practically every living thing save the very lowest is made up of two elements which for lack of any better terms we usually speak of as male and female. This is true of plants as well as animals, of the rose as well as 'the humming bird or the lowly oyster or the moss that grows upon the rock. Of all the men who have labour- , ed in this fascinating field of investigation, there is none who has penetrated so far" or gained an insight as Prof. Jacques Loeb. Dr. Loeb was the first to show that in various ways the eggs of some of the lower marine animals like sea urchins and starfishes could be made to develop without the intervention of the male element. He could take the sea urchin's eggs and put them into various salt solutions or shake them up and make them begin to grow ! The thing was so astonishing that at first even biologists refused to believe it. But Dr. Loeb kept on with his experiments, doing more and more . disturbing things until finally he could no longer be ignored. Then people who did not like the drift of his ideas tried to discredit them by saying that in these starfish and sea urchin's eggs the male element must exist and merely needed to lie shaken up for growth to begin in the usual way. What is known as "parthenogenesis" or virgin birth is not rare among the lower animals, as for example the bees in part. Dr. Loeb's work was called artificial parthenogenesis. But his opponents said it was not artificial at all, and that it would entirely fail when it came to higher animals. ' The eggs of the lower animals are i soft shelled or rather have a soft envelope, while the eggs of the higher «», animals have a hard shell, or to speak more accurately a tough envelope. It was found, howtever, that if this tough covering was pierced with a needle even frogs' eggs could be made to grow. And so Prof. Loeb set to work to grow a truly fatherless frog. Out of t£n thousand eggs that were pdfnctured only two of one /ariety got so far as the tadpole 3tage ; then even these died. But, of another variety, out of seven hundred eggs two more reached the tadpole stage. But only one of these eggs got any further. But this one grew to be a real live green frog, very young and immature, but still a living animal. For five months Prof. Loeb and his assistants watched over this poor little lonesome frog almost hour by hour. And one withering hot day they came and found it was dead. Prof. Loeb and his assistants are now going to learn how to raise frogs. Then they will undertake again the task of raising others artificially. If he succeeds ■ Prof. Loeb may solve some of the deepest problems of heredity. For the frog thus raised artificially proved to be a female of the species, and in a short time would have been ready to bear eggs. This means, so far as can now be seen, that it would be possible to go on raising fatherless frogs, generation after generation. Now that we know that even our own characters and dispositions are made up of little unit characters, which are inherited according to ■.•■•ry definite laws, it would be in- : "resting to know just what part Lhr- male element throughout the living world really plays. It is a matter fraught with tremendous possibilities.—"Popular Science Siftings."