116 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



normal connection of some parts with the rest of the 

 organism which proved to be the reason of the new formation. 

 This shows that something to do with the communication 

 among parts is at least connected with restitution, and 

 this communication may go on either by the unknown 

 action of specific tissues or by the aid of the blood or sap. 1 

 But in what this change or break of specific communication 

 consists, is absolutely unknown. One might suppose that 

 each part of the organisation constantly adds some sort of 

 ferment to the body fluids outside or inside the cells, that 

 the removing of any part will change the composition of 

 these fluids in this particular respect, and that this change 

 acts as a sort of communication to summon the restituting 

 parts of the whole to do their duty.' 2 



But I see quite well that such a theory is very little 



1 For a good discussion of "super-regeneration" in the roots of plants see 

 Nemec, Studien iiber die Regeneration, Berlin, 1905. Goebel and Winkler 

 have succeeded in provoking the "restitution" of parts which were not 

 removed at all by simply stopping their functions (leaves of certain plants 

 were covered with plaster, etc.). (Biol. Centralbl. 22, 1902, p. 385 ; Ber. 

 Bot. Ges. 20, 1902, p. 81.) A fine experiment is due to Miehe. The alga 

 Cladophora was subjected to " plasmolysis," each cell then formed a new 

 membrane of its own around the smaller volume of its protoplasm ; after 

 that the plants were brought back to a medium of normal osmotic pressure, 

 aud then each single cell grew up into a little plant (all of them being of 

 the same polarity!). Two questions seem to be answered by this fact; 

 loss of communication is of fundamental importance to restitution, and the 

 removal of mechanical obstacles plays no part in it, for the mechanical 

 resistances were the same at the end of the experiment as they had been at 

 the beginning. (Ber. Bot. Gcs. 23, 1905, p. 257.) For fuller analysis of all 

 the problems of this chapter see my Organische Regulatioiien, my reviews 

 in the Ergebnisse dcr Anatomic und Entwickelungsgeschichte, vols. viii. xi. 

 xiv., and my Boston address mentioned above. Compare also Fitting, 

 Ergebn. d. Physiol. vols. iv. and v. 



2 The so-called "inner secretion" in physiology proper would offer a 

 certain analogy to the facts assumed by such an hypothesis. Compare the 

 excellent summary given by E. Starling at the seventy-eighth meeting of the 

 German "Naturforscherversammlung," Stuttgart, 1906. 



