478 



THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVII 



That the rate of growth is independent of the amount 

 of nutrition is revealed by these experiments in a striking 

 manner ; they show rather the reverse, namely, the utiliza- 

 tion of the food by the organism according to the need of 

 its tissues and cells. The impulse to grow plays the lead- 

 ing part here, not the quantity of food brought into the 

 digestive organs, and in this respect the growth after 

 starvation has much in common with embryonic growth. 



TABLE A 



















t 

















Mult 







05 



n 





1 





ij 



Ij p l| 



"• !i 







1 



0843 

 0736 



2 



5 

 7 







'(Mil 



,,.,.!„ 



0856 



15 













KS 111? 



.ut»t 



.IM)4 





Food offers merely a greater or less scope to the inherent 

 growth-tendency of the organism, and, like so many other 

 factors, may either increase or decrease its effect. It is 

 possible that the reduction in size of the cells, or rather 

 the diminished ratio between cell-body and nucleus, has 

 something to do with the observed processes of intense 

 growth, and that the rejuvenescence of the organism is 

 analogous to the condition in the embryo, where the cell- 

 body is likewise small in relation to its nucleus. There 

 is certainly more than mere superficial resemblance be- 

 tween the two phenomena of growth from the point of 

 view of the protein metabolism. Already in the eighties 



