Ill] SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 285 



slow; and if the transformation take place at all, it will in all 

 likelihood proceed in the self-same way, whether it occur within 

 the Ufetime of an individual or during the long ancestral history of 

 a race. No small part of what is known as Wolff's or von Baer*s 

 law, that the individual organism tends to pass through the phases 

 characteristic of its ancestors, or that the life-history of the individual 

 tends to recapitulate the ancestral history of its race, lies wrapped 

 up in this simple account of the relation between growth and form. 

 But enough of this discussion. Let us leave for a while the 

 subject of the growth of the organism, and attempt to study the 

 conformation, within and without, of the individual cell. 



