THE INFLUENCE OF THE MARGINAL SENSE OR- 

 GANS ON THE RATE OF REGENERATION IN 

 CASSIOPEA XAMACHANA 



LEWIS R. GARY 



Princeton University 



ELEVEN FIGURES 



INTRODUCTION 



The previous studies on the influence of the nervous system 

 upon regeneration have given very divergent results which can 

 hardly be reconciled even when the fact that widely separated 

 groups of animals were used as the material for experimentation 

 is taken into consideration. 



While on the one hand certain students of this problem (Herbst, 

 Goldstein, Walter, Wolff) have taken the position that the nerv- 

 ous sytem in general, or some portion of it (sensory ganglion 

 Herbst, Walter), exerts a stimulus necessary for the complete 

 regeneration of normal structures; other workers have attributed 

 less and less importance to these influences. The intermediate 

 position that the influence of the nervous system is indirect, being 

 exerted mainly through the controlling of motor activity is well 

 expressed by Child ('05a) in the statement concerning anterior 

 regeneration in Leptoplana that, ''as in posterior regeneration 

 there is a close parallelism between the rapidity, amount and com- 

 pleteness of anterior and lateral regeneration and the charac- 

 teristic motor activity of the part concerned." 



Goldfarb ('09) concludes from his experiments on newts, earth- 

 worms and planarians that ''these experiments .... 

 should make one cautious about accepting the view of the direct 

 or even indirect influence of a nervous influence on regeneration." 



In all these studies the point at issue has been whether or not 

 complete regeneration of typical structures is possible in the ab- 



1 



THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL ZOOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 1 

 JULY, 1916 



