Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/247

Rh and, not only so, but, in bilateral animals, it is bilaterally symmetrical. This is not usually indicated in the form of the ovum, which is typically spherical, but in the disposition and developmental value of its parts. Here we have one of the most fundamental and least comprehended facts in embryology. It has, moreover, been shown that this property of direction and localization resides in the homogeneous, transparent, semifluid matrix that suspends all the visible particles of the protoplasm of the egg. It is probable that primordia of all grades possess similar properties, and, if this is so, we have a principle that goes far to explain the orderly localization of processes in morphogenesis.

This principle is not farther analyzable at present; but, as it may be found intact in parts of primordia no less than in the whole, it probably rests on a molecular basis. The most ready analogy in simpler phenomena is that of crystallization. The study of fluid crystals has furnished us examples of inorganic molecular aggregates in which direction and localization are given in the whole and also reappear rapidly in the parts when the whole is subdivided.

3. The Rôle of Cell-division in Development.—The individual organism begins as a single cell, from which all cells of the developed organism trace their lineage by the process of cell-division. This has been regarded as one of the most fundamental factors of the individual development in the theories of Weismann, Hertwig and others. But important as the process of cell-division undoubtably is in development, I believe that it is impossible to ascribe to it in principle more than an indirect effect: Considerable complexity of development is possible among Protozoa, whose body is unicellular, and some ova may carry out under experimental conditions a considerable part of the early development without a single cell-division. Moreover, the same kind of differentiated structure may be composed of one cell or of many, or of variable numbers of cells.

The physiological value of cell-division is no different in principle in developing than in functioning tissues (using these terms in the usual sense). The general law of relative reduction of surface in proportion to increasing mass imposes a size limit on cells, which can be regulated only by cell-division; an internal principle of regulation of cell-size has also been stated by R. Hertwig and Boveri, viz., a certain relationship characteristic of each species between the amounts of nuclear and cytoplasmic matters, so that increase of initial volume of the former involves increase of the latter, and vice versa. Corresponding to these principles, we find that individuals of different sizes of the same species vary not in the size, but in the number of the cells; and this is regulated by variation in the number of cell-divisions in different individuals.

Cell-division must necessarily, therefore, have an immense {{hws|func|functional}