MUTILATION AND REGENERATION 405 



that regeneration in plants and animals shows the great- 

 est difference, for in the plant no regeneration of this 

 kind takes place. The dissimilarities between animals 

 and plants in the matter of growth and development 

 throw some light upon the subject, for nearly all plants 

 grow continuously while most animals reach maturity 

 and subsequently cease active growth. Further, in 

 animals the germinal matter is stored up in the gonads 

 from which it is liberated under special circumstances, 

 while in vegetables the germinal matter seems to be 

 widely distributed throughout the structure and merely 

 concentrated at the flowers and at the buds. 



This wide distribution of the germinal matter makes 

 it more easy for a mutilated plant to begin life anew from 

 one of the germinal buds than to reconstruct the lost 

 parts. And the results of mutilation show this to be 

 the prevailing tendency. When mutilation is effected, 

 a new growth starts from some undisturbed bud, whether 

 upon leaf, leaf-stalk, bough, branch, trunk, or root, and 

 a new formation occurs, which though it may resemble 

 and serve the purpose of the lost part, is not an actual 

 regeneration as is the new tail of the lizard or the new 

 limb of the salamander. It is rather reproduction than 

 regeneration. 



The capacity for such new growth among plants varies 

 greatly, in some cases seeming to be almost unlimited, 

 as in the willow, of which almost any cut fragment stuck 

 into the ground will take root or almost any kind of 

 stump sprout, or the begonia of which even a fragment 

 of a leaf will sometimes start a whole plant. 



REFERENCE. 



THOMAS H. MORGAN: "Regeneration," N. Y., 1901. 

 fl. V. WILSON: Journal of Experimental Zoology, vol. v., 1907; 

 vol. ii., 1911. 



