The works of Francis Maitland Balfour, Volume 2 (of 4)

by Francis M. Balfour

The second volume of the memorial edition of Francis Maitland Balfour's works, edited by Michael Foster and Adam Sedgwick and published in 1885, reprints the first volume of his Treatise on Comparative Embryology, which had appeared in 1880. After introductory chapters on the ovum and spermatozoon, maturation and fertilization, and the segmentation of the egg, Balfour works group by group through the invertebrates: sponges, coelenterates, flatworms, rotifers, molluscs, polyzoa, brachiopods, annelids, leeches, nematodes, arthropods, echinoderms and Enteropneusta, with a bibliography closing each chapter. The treatise was the first attempt in English to gather the whole young science of embryology into a single account, and it made the reputation of a Cambridge zoologist who died in an Alpine accident at thirty. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.