1076 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OP FISH AND FISHERIES. [96] 



" Second principle : Every movement or change, every active force, 

 and every effect whatsoever observed in a body depends necessarily 

 upon mechanical causes, regulated by their laws.*' 



'^ Third principle : Every fact or ijlionomenon observed in a living body 

 is at once a physical fact or phenomenon, and a product of organiza- 

 tion." 



"Fourth principle: There is not in nature any matter which is pos- 

 sessed of the peculiar faculty of living. All bodies in which life mani- 

 fests itself present in the organization which they possess, and in con- 

 sequence of which movements are excited in their parts, the physical 

 and organic phenomena which constitute life ;* phenomena which are 

 executed and maintained in the body as long as the conditions essential 

 for their production subsist." 



Now that protoplasm itself is beginning to be regarded as not utterly 

 devoid of structure, and not a simple body, but a complex of many, how 

 much more significant these utterances of Lamarck become. The prog- 

 ress of biological research also tends to show that growth and segmen- 

 tation of simple cells is an exceedingly complex j^henomenon, and that 

 the very first steps of development are remarkably so, and that dis- 

 turbances of the molecular energies of the germinative vefeicle may lead 

 to the production of double or triple monsters by mere multiple impreg- 

 nation, as sho^n by Fol in the course of his investigations upon the 

 development of the Star-fish. These and other investigations have cast 

 doubt upon the hypothetical Moncrula stage of development, which is 

 such an important part of a poi)ular but now, i)robably in i^art, erro- 

 neous system of zoological philosophy. 



M6bius,t recognizing the necessity of revising the older conception of 

 l^rotoplasmic bodies (monoplastids) as invariably constituting formless 

 automatons, has suggested that since we find evidences of organization 

 as in some Protozoa, their specialized parts might appropriately be 

 called organnia, the diminutive of the word organ, as conventionally 

 applied to cellular aggregates having special functions in the organiza- 

 tion of the Metazoa. 



Lamarck's laws cf metamorphosis are remarkable as showing how far 

 he had advanced beyond the conceptions of his contemporaries as to 

 the nature of the forces at work in effecting morphological changes. 

 Quoting again from the Introduction to the Animaux sans Vertdbres, 

 edition of Deshayes and Milue-Edwrrds, I, p. 57, the first of these laws 

 is stated thus : 



"Life, with its peculiar forces, tends to continually augment the 

 volume of all bodies which possess it, and to extend the dimensions of 

 their parts, up to the end of the term of life." 



This approximates the doctrine of Ntigeli {Entsteh. nn Begriff der 



* Philogophie zoologique, I, 400. 



tDas Sterben der eiuzelligen nud vielzelligeu Tiere. Biolog. Centralbl., IV, 1884, 

 pp. ^^89-39-2. 



