Note 62 — THE INDIVIDUAL ORGANISM WITH REGARD TO FORM AND METABOLISM (continued 2)

See my article in Biolog. Centralblatt, 27, 1907, p. 69. The question is rendered still more complicated by the fact that in the case of the regeneration, say, of a leg it is not the original “morphogenetic compound” which is again required for disintegration, after it has become disintegrated once already, but only a specific part of it: just that part of it which is necessary for producing the leg! On the other hand, it would be impossible to understand, on the basis of physical chemistry, how the isolated branchial apparatus of Clavellina could be transformed, by chemical processes exclusively, into a system of which only a certain part consists of that substance of which the starting-point had been composed in its completeness.