Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/252

248 specific structures in the abnormal location. These experiments strongly suggest, even if they do not rigorously prove, that such substances are essential ingredients in definite developmental processes. I am indebted to Dr. Riddle for the following illustration: The various colors of mammals, such as black, brown, red, yellow, are due to chemical substances known as melanins. The chemistry of these substances starts out from a simple colorless base or chromogen, from which the series of colors, yellow, red, brown, black, is derived as successive stages of oxidation. The chromogen base is found in all mammals; the color then would appear to be due to the varying powers of the cells of different individuals to oxidize the given base. Tornier has shown in his experiments on the coloration of Amphibia that the particular color developed is a function of nutrition, varying in the order of oxidation value (as was later ascertained) according to the degree of nutrition. The development or inheritance of color, therefore, can certainly not be due to the presence of black or brown or red or yellow determinants in the germ, assumed for theoretical purposes by some students of heredity, but to a specific power of oxidation of the protoplasm. This faculty in its turn is no doubt capable of resolution into other physiological terms.

We are only at the beginning of the study of correlations of embryonic metabolism. The role that the internal secretions of the embryo may play in the processes of development is practically unknown; but we may expect to find here biological reactions of fundamental significance, especially when we consider such phenomena of the adult as the influence of pregnancy on the organism, the possibility of inducing lactation, with all that this implies, by injection of fœtal tissues; the relations between the sex organs and secondary sexual characteristics and indeed the entire habitus of the organism; the influence of a small gland like the thyroid, or the pituitary body, etc. Biochemical reaction runs through every phase of development and is unquestionably the decisive factor in the appearance of many characters of the organism.

Self-differentiation.—The conception of self-differentiation in morphogenesis is a vague and unsatisfactory one. In a sense it is a contradiction in biological terms, for assuredly environment enters into every biological process. On the one hand, the term covers the fact of the specificity of primordia, which means only a certain stability of metabolism and reaction capacity; on the other hand, it may have specific meaning in one large class of developmental phenomena, viz., polarization and localization. If, for instance, the term self-differentiation might be applied to the appearance of definite axes, angles, points and faces of a crystal, it would with equal propriety be applicable to the appearance of polarity, bilaterality, etc., the axes of embryonic development. But if the term should come to hold simply this restricted meaning, then all reason for its maintenance would be gone.