"I am for you and you are for me,
Not only for your own sake, but for others' sakes,
Envelop'd in you, sleep great heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me."
Walt Whitman.
I
A French biologist has discovered that when a female oyster is starved, and its constitution thus deteriorated, it becomes transformed into a male.
The male oyster must be inferior, therefore, in organisation to the female. Its constitutional potential is less, since the constitutional potential of the female contains both its own, and the potential of the male. And the lesser, it is admitted, cannot contain the greater; although higher evolutionary forms, when subjected to conditions which preclude them from sustaining these their higher forms, may lapse to modes less complex.
Further and more striking examples of such Sex-transformation are afforded by so-called "mules," or "neuters," which occur in other species. A well-known case is that of a pea-hen belonging to Lady Tynte. Having laid eggs from which chicks were raised, this pea-hen, after moulting, developed feathers proper to the other sex; appearing like a pied peacock. In the third year the same phenomenon occurred in her; she developed spurs, moreover, resembling those of the cock. She never bred after this change in her plumage.
As already mentioned, kindred phenomena of sex-metamorphosis are observed in women after operations involving removal of reproductive glands.