270 



BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



If, nevertheless, we preferred to regard as a germ each of these 

 filaments taken by itself, this would be a germ improperly 

 so called ; for it would contain 07ily similar pat tides, and 

 would represent, so to speak, only itself. It would be to the new 

 bark or the itew skin, in some sense, what 7inity is to number. 

 This is what I meant to express above when I designated the 

 principles of these filaments by the term organic points. There 

 are, perhaps, in certain animals of the lowest classes, for exam- 

 ple in polyps, organs of so simple a structure that nature succeeds 

 informijig them in such a zaay. It cannot be said, exactly speak- 

 ing, that these organs preexisted all formed in the animal ; but 

 it must be said that the organic elements from which they were 

 to result existed originally in the animal, and that their evolu- 

 tion is the Jiatural effect of the derivation of tJie juices, etc. 



(3) "According to these principles, each similar part, each 

 fiber, each fibril, carries in itself the sources of reparation rela- 

 tive to the various losses that may happen to it. What an 

 idea this manner of regarding an organic whole gives us of 

 the excellence of the work and the intelligence of the Worker! 



(4) " Moreover, as we have seen above, each fiber, each fibril, 

 must necessarily be organized with so marvelous an art as to 

 assimilate the nourishing juices in a direct relation to its par- 

 ticular structure and its peculiar functions; otherzvise the fiber 

 or the fibril would change structure in developing, and would no 

 longer be able to discharge the ftinctions to which it is destined. 

 Its primitive organization is therefore stich that it separates, pre- 

 pares, and arranges the nutritive molecules in such a juanner 

 that ordifiarily no essential change occurs in its mechanism or in 

 its working!' 



When in paragraph 2d Bonnet says of the bark or skin, that 

 "it does not yet exist," he evidently means that it does exist 

 in the state of organic elements, though not yet in the state 

 known as "bark" or "skin." This state is reached, not by 

 epigenesis, but by ''complete evolution and the close union of 

 all the filaments." 



So in the case of Hydra, the organs may be of such a simple 

 nature that they do not need to preexist "all formed"; that 

 is, with all their elements arranged precisely as they will be in 



