Note 196 — V. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SEXUAL REPRODUCTION IN THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.

Compare my paper, ‘Parthenogenese bei den Ostracoden,’ in ‘Zool. Anzeiger,’ 1880, p. 82. Purely negative evidence, unless on an immense scale, is quite rightly considered to be of no great value in most cases. But the condition of these animals renders the accumulation of such evidence unusually easy, because the presence of males in a colony of Ostracodes can be proved by a very simple indirect test. Thus if a colony contains any males the receptacula seminis of all mature females are filled with spermatozoa, and on the other hand we may be quite sure that males are absent, if after the examination of many mature females, no spermatozoa can be found in any of their receptacula.