224 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1129 



CONCLUSION 



From the standpoint here adopted, dif- 

 ferentiation is the expression of internal as 

 well as external specificities. It is a cyto- 

 plasmic reaction and when it occurs de- 

 notes that something is not as it was before. 

 Here as elsewhere, we do not deal with iso- 

 lated events, but correlative changes with 

 specific antecedents and specific conse- 

 quences. This linkage of specified hap- 

 penings persists through the entire life- 

 cycle but in the adult, having few or rela- 

 tively unimportant morphogenetic results, 

 constitutes the basis for a physiology of 

 maintenance. 



In development as well as maintenance, 

 that which constitutes our problem is a 

 harmonic relation among all the processes 

 whose net result makes possible the identi- 

 fication not only of an organism at any 

 stage of life, but also of its ancestors. 

 Such constancy, maintained despite the be- 

 wildering complexity and multiplicity of 

 processes, is thinkable only in terms of the 

 most rigid determinism. 



The results of destroying portions of an 

 embryo, the restoration of lost parts, heter- 

 omorphoses, the development of entire or- 

 ganisms from egg-fragments, grafting, the 

 reorganization of an individual from its 

 disjointed cells, and the fluidity of certain 

 types of behavior, are in no sense counter 

 arguments. All that these show is that 

 the equilibria within which specificity is 

 possible, have a certain range. When the 

 eye-stalk of a crustacean regenerates, not 

 an eye, which it does only under certain 

 circumstances, but an antenna, the antenna 

 is species-true, and when the stump grows 

 an eye, which it does under circumstances 

 of a different sort, but no less specific, the 

 eye is not that of a man or an octopus. 



If the developmental history of an indi- 

 vidual yields a result from which his an- 

 cestry can be inferred, what other proof is 



needed for the accuracy of all the under- 

 lying processes? And what need have we 

 who can think through our problems in 

 materialistic terms for regulatory inter- 

 ference by metaphysical vapors? Far 

 from making these things easier to under- 

 stand, the table-rappings of the vitalist 

 only withdraw attention from the one basis 

 on which we can hope, at present, for a 

 scientific account of the individual at all. 



0. C. Glasee 



University of Michigan 



THE NECESSITY FOR BIOLOGICAL 

 BASES FOR LEGISLATION AND 

 PRACTISE IN THE FISHER- 

 IES INDUSTRIES 



It is lack of knowledge of the world he lives 

 in that makes civilized man an actual catas- 

 trophe to nature's resources and methods. 



In this, as in every new country, earlier 

 generations began a series of stupendous eco- 

 nomic blunders of turning into cash every nat- 

 ural asset available, blindly regardless of fu- 

 ture necessities. Public assets have been, and 

 in some instances are still, legitimate private 

 booty for those whose imagination may be 

 sufficiently keen to see the gold dollar hidden 

 there. It is only within recent years that evi- 

 dence has accumulated of the imperative ne- 

 cessity of developing the converse method of 

 solving the economic problems of how best to 

 transform free public goods, e. g., lands, min- 

 erals, forests, water power, aquatic life, wild 

 birds and quadrupeds, and scenery, into pri- 

 vate property or adequately safeguarded pub- 

 lic assets. The problem itself is of huge pro- 

 portions and extensive in its ramifications. 

 We are only beginning to grasp its funda- 

 mentalness and to awaken to the extent of our 

 failure to find the correct solution. We still 

 need a system of education which enables the 

 child, the teacher, the parent, the state and 

 federal legislator better to acquire the funda- 

 mental facts and their bearings upon human 

 life and human progress. This alone would 

 have made improbable, if not impossible, the 

 present status where in some respects, in any 



