On the alternation of generations; or, the propagation and development of animals through alternate generations: a peculiar form of fostering the young in the lower classes of animals ... / By Joh. Japetus Sm. Steenstrup ... Translated from the German version of C.H. Lorenzen, by George Busk.

  • Steenstrup, J. Japetus Sm. (Johannes Japetus Sm.), 1813-1897.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the alternation of generations; or, the propagation and development of animals through alternate generations: a peculiar form of fostering the young in the lower classes of animals ... / By Joh. Japetus Sm. Steenstrup ... Translated from the German version of C.H. Lorenzen, by George Busk. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE TO THE GERMAN VERSION. GREATER publicity* is herewith given to an Essay, the contents of which will, I hope, prove interesting, not only to the professed naturalist, but to all of the generally well informied, who may be led to the consideration of the Harmonies of development in Nature. On whose account also I have endeavoured (with what success the kind reader may determine) so to arrange the exposition, that the least possible impediment should stand in the way of any one desirous of becoming acquainted with the mode of natural development in question. The special subject of this Essay is the fundamental idea expressed by the words “ Alternation of Genera- tions, or the remarkable, and till now inexplicable natural phenomenon of an animal producing an offspring, which at no time resembles its parent, but which, on the other hand, itself brings forth a progeny, which returns in its form and nature to the parent animal, so that the mater- nal animal does not meet with its resemblance in its own brood, but in its descendants of the second, third, or fourth degree or generation; and this always takes place in the different animals which exhibit the phenomenon, in a determinate generation, or with the intervention of a determinate number of generations. This remarkable * By the translation from Danish into German.