SOME SPECULATIONS CONCEKNING REGULATIONS 459 



Control (regulation) is attained over each of the bodily components 

 one after another. In what order do the regulations perfect them- 

 selves? Over which components are regulations simultaneously 

 gained? How does the order differ in diverse species? Can 

 earlier acquirement of some specific one be induced by disturbances 

 of content of that particular component? All those questions re- 

 gard functions as anything but fixed. They contrast the same 

 organism before and after regulations are operating. 



Much inquiry will be required to map the development of various 

 regulations in germ cells, embryos, and young and senescent organ- 

 isms. One speculation is that the development of any one equili- 

 bration is rarely if ever independent of others ; that equilibrations 

 are not discrete, except by definition. 



Not all regulations arise anew in each individual. Some are 

 continuous from parent to offspring, e.g., energy transformation, 

 osmotic pressure. Those that later unfold to view might be, of 

 course, performed or not, and it would be a paradox if the existence 

 or non-existence of physiological Anlagen having no measurable 

 characteristics could ever be decided. The suggestion of Haldane 

 ('17), that processes by which the organism successfully evades or 

 opposes influence which have not fallen within the previous experi- 

 ence of the species, are created at the moment when occasion arises 

 rather than being in latent reserve, can probably never be fully 

 tested. 



In phylogeny few actual data can be cited, and little is agreed as 

 to which living animals represent physiological types more ances- 

 tral than others. My guess is that the equilibrations of most chosen 

 components have been evolved repeatedly by many historically 

 distinct groups of organisms. Hence either the equilibrations are 

 polyphyletic, or the accepted structural characters on which 

 taxonomy is usually based are polyphyletic, or both. Of course, 

 many equilibrations of functions may be expected to have evolved 

 together, and with structures and with environments. The dog 

 without equilibration of glucose would be as inconsistent with the 

 rest of a dog, as the Arbacia egg with temperature balance at some 

 point other than that of its environment. 



The composition (state) of the body is easily guessed to be the 

 emergent of the simultaneous equilibrations of all its components. 

 Conversely, the familiar data of biochemical compositions might be 

 taken to represent first rough correlations among diverse equili- 

 brations. 



