Chimæras Dire: Transplantation of Heads of Insects

Abstract

I AM sorry that Prof. Przibram (NATURE, September 6, p. 347) should think that I treated Dr. Finkler's statements with unbecoming levity. The object of my letter was simply to direct attention to Dr. Blunck and Dr. Speyer's criticisms of Dr. Finkler's work and not to express agreement with one side or the other. Now that Prof. Przibram has undertaken to reply to these criticisms, the accuracy of my brief summary is perhaps no longer a matter of great importance, although I fail to see that it is in any way seriously misleading. It is true that I ought to have written “thorax” instead of “wing-cases,” and also that Dr. Finkler has not yet told us with what he fed his inter-specific monsters ; but I still think that the sentence “a male head led a female body into unwonted perversities” is not an unfair version of what Dr. Finkler has said. To those of us who have only a scanty knowledge of the subject it seems a less extraordinary thing that “the male head kept its usual reaction towards the female when transplanted to a body of opposite sex” than that the body should acquire a new reaction as a result of the operation.