Hertwig has shown that the tiny transparent ova of the echinoderms are the most convenient for following the details of this important process of impregnation. We can, in this case, easily and successfully accomplish artificial impregnation, and follow the formation of the stem-cell step by step within the space of ten minutes. If we put ripe ova of the star-fish or sea-urchin in a watch glass with sea-water and add a drop of ripe sperm-fluid, we find each ovum impregnated within five minutes. Thousands of the fine, mobile ciliated cells, which we have described as “sperm-threads” (Fig. 20), make their way to the ova, owing to a sort of chemical sensitive action which may be called “smell.” But only one of these innumerable spermatozoa is chosen—namely, the one that first reaches the ovum by the serpentine motions of its tail, and touches the ovum with its head. At the spot where the point of its head touches the surface of the ovum the protoplasm of the latter is raised in the form of a small wart, the “impregnation rise” (Fig. 25 _A_). The spermatozoon then bores its way into this with its head, the tail outside wriggling about all the time (Fig. 25 _B, C_). Presently the tail also disappears within the ovum. At the same time the ovum secretes a thin external yelk-membrane (Fig. 25 _ C_), starting from the point of impregnation; and this prevents any more spermatozoa from entering.
Fig.24 An impregnated echinoderm ovum. Fig. 24—An impregnated echinoderm ovum, with small homogeneous nucleus (_e k_). (From _Hertwig._)
Inside the impregnated ovum we now see a rapid series of most important changes. The pear-shaped head of the sperm-cell, or the “head of the spermatozoon,” grows larger and rounder, and is converted into the male pro-nucleus (Fig. 26 _s k_). This has an attractive influence on the fine granules or particles which are distributed in the protoplasm of the ovum; they arrange themselves in lines in the figure of a star. But the attraction or the “affinity” between the two nuclei is even stronger. They move towards each other inside the yelk with increasing speed, the male (Fig. 27 _s k_) going more quickly than the female nucleus (_e k_). The tiny male nucleus takes with it the radiating mantle which spreads like a star about it. At last the two sexual nuclei touch (usually in the centre of the globular ovum), lie close together, are flattened at the points of contact, and coalesce into a common mass. The small central particle of nuclein which is formed from this combination of the nuclei is the stem-nucleus, or the first segmentation nucleus; the new-formed cell, the product of the impregnation, is our stem-cell, or “first segmentation sphere” (Fig. 2).