XVIII. On the ova and pseudova of insects

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Abstract
If, in his celebrated work on “Alternations of Generations,” Professor Steenstrup has not succeeded in explaining the phenomena of asexual reproduction, he has at least the great merit of having brought together many interesting observations, the relations of which had remained unrecognized up to his time. The value of his suggestions is well shown by the number of memoirs which in the last few years have appeared on this subject, and by their having produced a discussion in which almost every naturalist has taken some part. It is, however, perhaps not going too far to say that as yet no satisfactory explanation of the phenomena has been suggested, and that we are now just as far from knowing as we were twenty years ago, what are the different conditions under which some eggs remain undeveloped unless they are brought under the influence of the spermatozoa, while others contain within themselves the power of producing young without the necessity of any external stimulus. Still, though we have been unable to obtain any insight into the philosophy of the subject, we have in this period collected together a great mass of facts which will perhaps ere long lead us to some satisfactory conclusion. In a paper “On the Double Method of Reproduction in Daphnia ," I lately endeavoured to show that eggs and buds are in fact identical, that they are the two extremes of a long series, and that therefore every intermediate gradation between them will probably exist or has existed in nature. I however suggested that it would probably “be convenient to apply some distinguishing name to those eggs which do not require impregnation as a necessary antecedent to development,” and Professor Huxley has since proposed to call them Pseudova.

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