THE BIOLOGY OF THE CELL SURFACE 



part believe that fully to embrace this faith in a chance 

 discovery would anaesthetize activity and the will to seek, 

 while life lasts, the mystery of life. 



That we are far from having completely exhausted the 

 possibilities of description in biology is clearly shown by 

 the fact that no one of the grand phenomena treated in this 

 book has been adequately defined by description that fulfils 

 our demands for exactness. 



My own observations having early taught me how rapidly 

 changes ensue in the living &g^, I have studied stages in 

 development not of minutes' but of seconds' duration. 

 Microscopy by extending the range of our vision increases 

 our powers of observation. But even if there should be 

 revealed to us the ultimate space-pattern, there would 

 still remain the problem of the changes of this pattern in 

 time; a gap between the beginning and the end of an event 

 would persist. Just as with the aid of the various kinds 

 of microscopes^ we uncover the minutest space, so must 

 we register most minute changes in time: we must clock 

 the fleeting changes whose sum total is the living thing. 



Studies of forms and form-changes must continue as long 

 as there are organisms and their processes, eggs and their 

 development, still unexplored. Since not all work ever 

 done in this field is wholly dependable and perfect, there is 

 all the more reason why the modern student experimenting 

 on eggs must acquaint himself directly with the pattern 

 which he aims to explain. Naturally, In that earlier period 

 in the history of the study of eggs the new findings, as 

 fertilization, chromosome behavior, etc., excited and stimu- 

 lated the discoverers to exuberant expressions that were often 

 In error because they came from work which though 

 honestly well done was not always sufficient to justify the 

 conclusions drawn from it. Work like that of Boverl which 



^ Note the recently inverited electron-super microscope. 



26 



