Among these there are two kinds of eggs, summer and winter eggs, of which the former go through their development into a young animal within a brood-cavity on the back of the female, while the others are liberated into the water, and are surrounded by a hard shell. The summer eggs receive more or less nourishment from the mother by the extravasation of the nutritive constituents of the blood into the brood-cavity, and they thus require a smaller provision of yolk than the winter eggs, which are thrown entirely upon their own resources. Accordingly we find that in all Daphnids the summer eggs are at least a little smaller and have less yolk than the winter eggs, as in the genus Daphnella (Fig. 70, A and B), while in some species, e.g. of Bythotrephes, this difference increases so much that the summer eggs are almost without yolk, and therefore very minute (Fig. 71, B). The reason of this lies in the fact that in this case the brood-sac is filled with a nutritive fluid rich in albuminoid substances, so that the embryo during its development is continually supplied with concentrated nourishment. This is not the case with the winter eggs, because these are liberated into the water, and we therefore find that they are of enormous size and quite filled with yolk (Fig. 71, A).
Fig. 70. Daphnella. A, summer
egg. B, winter egg. Oe,
'oil-globules' of the summer
egg.
Fig. 71. Bythotrephes longimanus. A, the brood-sac
(Br) of the female containing two winter-ova
(Wei), on which five large sperm-cells (sp) are lying.
R, dorsal surface of the animal. Dr, glandular layer
which secretes the shell-substance. BK, copulatory
canal. B, the brood-sac (Br) containing two summer-ova
(Sei). Both figures under the same magnification
(100).
In this instance, as in all the simpler eggs, the yolk constituents are secretions of the cell-body of the ovum; but nature employs many devices, if I may so speak, to bring up the mass of the egg, and especially of the yolk, to the highest attainable point. Thus in many orders of Crustaceans, for instance in the water-fleas just mentioned, there are special egg-nourishing cells, that is, young ovum-cells which do not differ from the rest either in origin or in appearance, only they do not become mature eggs, but at a definite time cease to make progress, and then slowly break up, so that their substance may be absorbed as food by the true ova. Thus there is a much greater and at the same time more rapid growth than could be attained through nourishment from the blood alone. In the Daphnids the ovaries consist of groups of four cells each, only one of which becomes an ovum (Fig. 72, Ei), while the other three (1, 2, and 4) form nutritive cells which break up. This is so in all summer eggs; but in the winter eggs a much larger number of nutritive cells may take part in equipping a single ovum, and in the genus Moina over forty do so. But here the difference in size between the two kinds of eggs is very marked, the winter eggs being twice the diameter of the summer eggs.
Fig. 72. Sida crystallina, a Daphnid: a fragment of the ovary showing one of the groups of four cells, of which 1, 2, and 4 are nutritive cells, and only 3 becomes an ovum. Magnified 300 times.
In many insects also, e.g. in beetles and bees, similar nutritive cells occur, but there is in these forms a different arrangement which serves at the same time for the formation of the shell, and the supplying to the ovum of the necessary yolk-stuffs—the ovum is surrounded with a dense layer of epithelial cells, a so-called 'follicle.' In mammals and birds also these 'follicle cells' certainly play an important part in the nutrition of the ovum, though it is not yet quite clear how they act—whether they produce within themselves grains of yolk and other nutritive substances and convey these to the ovum by means of fine radiating processes, or whether they themselves ultimately migrate into the ovum and there break up. In any case it is worthy of note that all these follicular cells in insects and vertebrates have the same origin as the egg-cells, that is, they are modified germ-cells. The case is therefore essentially the same as in the nutritive cells of the Daphnids; nature sacrifices the greater number of the germ-cells in order to be able to provide more abundantly for the minority. She thus succeeds in raising the egg beyond itself, so to speak, and provides the means for a growth which could obviously not be attained by means of the ordinary nourishment supplied by the blood.
