Hormones and Heredity Part 8

The facts to which I shall refer concerning _Oenothera_ are for the most part quoted on the authority of Dr. Ruggles Gates, and taken from his book _The Mutation Factor in Evolution_ (London, 1915). The occurrence of mutations in _Oenothera_ was first noticed by De Vries, the Dutch botanist, in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam in 1886. He found a large number of specimens of _Oenothera Lamarckiana_ growing in an abandoned potato-field at Hilversum, and these plants showed an unusual amount of variation. He transplanted nine young plants to the Botanic Garden of Amsterdam, and cultivated them and their descendants for seven generations in one experiment. Similar experiments have been made by himself and others. The large majority of the plants produced from the _Oe.

Lamarckiana_ by self-fertilisation were of the same form with the same characters, but a certain percentage presented 'mutations'--that is, characters different from the parent form, and in some cases identical with those of plants occurring occasionally among those growing wild in the field where the observations began. Nine of these mutants have been recognised and defined, and distinguished by different names. The characters are precisely described and in many cases figured by Gates in the volume cited above. The first mutant to be recognised--in 1887--was one called _lata._ It must be explained that the young plant of _Oenothera_ has practically no stem, but a number of leaves radiating in all directions from the growing point which is near the surface of the soil. The plant is normally biennial, and in the first season the internodes are not developed. This first stage is called the 'rosette.'

From the reduced stem are afterwards developed one or more long stems with elongated internodes, bearing leaves and flowers. In the mutation _lata_ the rosette leaves are shorter and more crinkled than those of _Lamarckiana,_ and the tips of the leaves are very broad and rounded.

The stems of the mature plant are short and usually more or less dec.u.mbent with irregular branches. The flower-buds are peculiarly stout and barrel-shaped, with a protrusion on one side. The seed-capsules are short and thick, containing relatively few seeds, and the pollen is wholly or almost wholly sterile.

It is to be noted here, a fact emphasised by DeVries in his earliest publications on the subject, that in nearly all, if not all cases, a mutation does not consist in a peculiarity of a single organ, but in an alteration of the whole plant in every part. In this respect mutations as observed in _Oenothera_ seem to be in striking contrast to the majority of Mendelian characters. Mutation in fact seems to be a case of what the earlier Darwinians called correlation, while Mendelian characters may apparently be separated and rejoined in any combination. For example, in breeds of fowls any colour or any type of plumage may be obtained with single comb or with rose comb. In my own experiments on fowls the loose kind of plumage first known in the Silky fowl, which is white, could be combined with the coloured plumage of the type known as black-red. At the same time it must be borne in mind that since the factor, whether a portion of a chromosome or not, is transmitted in heredity as a part of a single cell, the gamete, and since every cell of the developed individual is derived by division from the single zygote cell formed by the union of the two gametes, the factor or determinant must be contained in every cell of the soma, except in cases where differential division, or what is called somatic segregation, takes place. Thus the factor which causes the comb to be a rose comb in a fowl must be present in the cells that produce the plumage or the toes or any other part of the body. Morgan, as mentioned above, finds in _Drosophila_ that factors do affect several parts of the body. It is, however, curious to consider that the factor which produces intense pigmentation of the skin and all the connective tissue in the Silky fowl has no effect on the colour of the plumage in that breed, which is a recessive white. The plumage is an epidermic structure, and therefore distinct from the connective tissue, but it is difficult to understand why a pigment factor though present in every cell has no effect on epidermic cells.

The Mendelians, when the mutations of _Oenothera_ were first described, endeavoured to show that they were merely examples of the segregation of factors from a heterozygous combination. They suggested in fact that _Oenothera Lamarckiana_ was the result of a cross, or repeated crosses, between plants differing in many factors, that the numerous mutations were similar to the variety of different types which are produced by breeding together the grey mice arising from a cross between an albino and a j.a.panese waltzing mouse in Darbis.h.i.+re's experiment. Since that time, however, the natural distribution and the cultural history of _Oenothera_ has been very thoroughly worked out. _Oenothera Lamarckiana_ is the common Evening Primrose of English gardens. The species of the sub-genus _Onagra_ to which _Lamarckiana_ belongs were originally confined to America (Canada, United States, and Mexico), but _Lamarckiana_ itself has never been found there in a wild state. Attempts, however, to produce it by crossing of other forms have not succeeded, and a specimen has been discovered at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle at Paris, collected by Michaux in North America about 1796, which agrees exactly with the _Oenothera Lamarckiana_ naturalised or cultivated in Europe. The plant was first described by Lamarck from plants grown in the gardens of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, under the name _OE. grandiflora_, which had been introduced by Solander from Alabama, but Seringe subsequently decided that Lamarck's species was distinct from _grandiflora_, and named it _Lamarckiana_. Gates states that Michaux was in the habit of collecting seeds with his specimens, and that it is therefore highly probable that Lamarck's specimens were grown directly from seeds collected in America by Michaux. Gates considers that the suggestion of the hybrid origin of _Lamarckiana_ in culture is thus finally disposed of. By the year 1805, _Lamarckiana_ was apparently naturalised and flouris.h.i.+ng on the coast of Lancas.h.i.+re, and in 1860 it was brought into commerce, probably from these Lancas.h.i.+re plants, by Messrs, Carter. The cultures of De Vries are descended from these commercial seeds, but the Swedish race of _Lamarckiana_, as well as those of English gardens, differ in several features and must have come from another source or been modified by crossing with _grandiflora_. This last remark is quoted from Gates, but it seems improbable that the Dutch plants should be derived from those of Lancas.h.i.+re, and those of English gardens from a different source. The fact seems to be, according to other parts of Gates's volume, that there are various races of _Lamarckiana_ in English gardens and in the Isle of Wight, as well as in Sweden, etc., and that these races differ from one another less than the mutants of De Vries and his followers.

An important point about these mutations is that their production is a constant feature of _Lamarckiana_. Whenever large numbers of the seeds of this plant are grown, a certain proportion of the plants developed present these _same_ mutations; not always all of them--some may be absent in one culture, present in another, but four of them are fairly common and of constant occurrence. The total proportion of mutant plants compared with the normal was 1.55 per cent. in one family, 5.8 per cent. in another. It would appear therefore, supposing that mutations arose subsequently in the same determinate way from previous mutations, that evolution, though in a number of divergent directions from one ancestral form, would proceed along definite lines, and that there would be nothing accidental about it.

We should thus arrive at a demonstration of what Eimer called orthogenesis, or evolution in definite directions.

The mutation _lata_ cannot be said to breed true, as the pollen is almost entirely sterile. It has therefore been propagated by crossing with _Lamarckiana_ pollen, with the result that both forms are obtained with _lata_ varying in proportion from 4 per cent. to 45 per cent.

_Rubrinervis_ is a mutation from _Lamarckiana_, chiefly distinguished by red midribs in the leaves and red stripes on the sepals. When propagated from self-fertilised seed it produced about 95 per cent. of offspring with the same characters, and the remaining 5 per cent. mutants, one of which was _laevifolia_ which had been found by De Vries among plants growing wild at Hilversum. Gates obtained a single plant among offspring of _rubrinervis_ in which the sepals were red throughout, and to this he gave the name _rubricalyx_. When selfed this plant gave rise to both _rubricalyx_ and _rubrinervis_, and in the second generation when the _rubricalyx_ was selfed again the numbers of the two were approximately 3 to 1. _Rubricalyx_ is therefore a dominant heterozygote, and this fact was further confirmed in the third generation when a selfed plant gave 200 offspring all _rubricalyx_, the mother plant having evidently been h.o.m.ozygous for the red character. In this case, therefore, we have what Bateson was seeking, the origin of a new dominant character under observation, the original mutation having arisen in a single gamete of the zygote which gave rise to the plant. It is claimed by mutationists that mutations are not new combinations or separations of Mendelian unit characters already present, but are themselves new characters, though not always necessarily, as in the case of _rubricalyx_, new unit characters in the Mendelian sense.

Perhaps the most interesting of the researches on the phenomena of mutation are those concerning the relation of the characters to the chromosomes of the cell, in which Gates has been a pioneer and one of the most industrious and successful investigators. The behaviour of the chromosomes in meiosis or reduction division both in the pollen mother-cells and in the megaspore mother-cells which give rise to the so-called embryo-sac are fully described by Gates. Here it is only necessary to refer to the abnormalities in the reduction division which are related to mutation, and the results of these abnormalities in the number of chromosomes. The original number of chromosomes in _OEnothera_ is 14. In the mutation _lata_ this has become 15, and also in another mutation called _semilata_. The chromosomes before the reduction division are arranged in pairs, each pair consisting, it is believed, of one paternal and one maternal chromosome. One of each pair goes into one daughter-cell and the other into the other, but not all maternal into one and all paternal into the other. Thus each daughter-cell after the first or heterotypic division in normal cases contains 7 chromosomes. A second h.o.m.otypic division takes place in which each chromosome splits into two as in somatic divisions, and thus we have 4 gametes with 7 chromosomes each.

Now when _lata_ is produced it is believed that in the heterotypic division one pair pa.s.ses into one daughter-cell instead of one chromosome of the pair into each daughter-cell, the other pairs segregating in the usual way. We thus have one daughter-cell with 8 chromosomes and the other with 6. This 6+8 distribution has actually been observed in the pollen mother-cell in _rubrinervis_. When a gamete with 8 chromosomes unites in fertilisation with a normal gamete with 7 the zygote has 15. The _lata_ mutants having an odd chromosome are almost completely male-sterile, and their seed production is also much reduced: but this partial sterility cannot be attributed entirely to the odd chromosome because _semilata_, which has also 15 chromosomes, does not show the same degree of sterility.

Other cases occur in which the number of chromosomes in the somatic cells is double the ordinary number--namely, 28--and others in which the number is 21. The normal number in the gamete, 7, is considered the simple or haploid number, and therefore the number 28 is called tetraploid.

This doubling of the somatic number of chromosomes is now known in a number of plants and animals. It occurs in the _OEnothera_ mutant _gigas_.

The origin of it has not been clearly made out, but it must result either from the splitting of each chromosome or from the omission of the chromosome reduction. In many cases the more numerous chromosomes are individually as large as those in normal plants, and consequently the nucleus is larger, the cell is larger, and the whole plant is larger in every part. But giantism may occur without tetraploidy, and vice versa. In the _OEnothera gigas_ the rosette leaves are broadly lanceolate with obtuse or rounded tips, more crinkled than in _Lamarckiana_, petioles shorter. The stem-leaves are also larger, broader, thicker, more obtuse, and more crinkled than in _Lamarckiana_. The stem is much stouter, almost double as thick, but not taller because the upper internodes are shorter and less numerous. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the stouter character of the organs in this plant is causally connected with the increased number of chromosomes. Where the number of cells formed is approximately similar, as in two allied forms of plant in this case, the greater size of the cells would naturally give a stouter habit, but it is clear that large cells do not necessarily mean greater size. The cells of _Salamander_ and _Proteus_ are the largest found among Vertebrates, but those Amphibia are not the largest Vertebrates. It is curious to note how different are these discoveries concerning differences in the _number_ of chromosomes from the conception of Morgan that a mutation depends on a factor situated in a part of one chromosome.

More copious details concerning mutations will be found in the publications cited. The question to be considered here is how far the claim is justified that the facts of this kind hitherto discovered afford an explanation of the process of evolution. It seems probable that mutations are of different kinds, as exemplified in _Oenothera_ by _gigas_ and _rubricalyx_ respectively, the former producing only sterile hybrids, the latter behaving exactly like a Mendelian unit. There can be little doubt that, as Bateson states, numerous forms recognised as species or varieties in nature differ in the same way as the races or breeds of cultivated organisms which differ by factors independently inherited.

There are facts, however, which prove that all species are not sterile _inter se_, and that their characters when they are hybridised do not always segregate in Mendelian fas.h.i.+on. John C. Phillips, [Footnote: _Journ. Exper. Zool._, vol. xviii., 1915.] for example, crossed three wild species of duck, _Anas boscas_ (the Mallard) with _Dafila acuta_ (the Pintail) and with _Anas tristis_. In the former cross he states that except for one or two characters there seemed to be no more tendency to variation in the _F2_ generation than in the _F1_. An _F1_ Pintail-Mallard [female] was mated with a wild Pintail [male]. According to Mendelian expectation the offspring of this mating should have been half Pintail and half Pintail-Mallard hybrids, but Phillips states that on casual inspection the plumage of all the males appeared pure Pintail although the shape was distinctly Mallard-like. The statement is, however, open to criticism. The question is, what were the unit characters in the parent species? If the unit characters were very small and numerous, an individual in which all the characters of the Pintail existed together among the offspring of the hybrid mated with pure Pintail would be rare in proportion to the individuals presenting other combinations. Of the _F2_'s obtained from crossing _Anas tristis_ [male] with _Anas boscas_ [female]

Phillips obtained 23 females and 16 males. The females were all alike and similar to _F1_ females. Of the males one was a variate specially marked, about half-way between the _F1_ type and the Mallard parent. This, according to Phillips, was a segregate. The rest showed a range of variation but no distinct segregation.

It is somewhat surprising that Mendelian experts, who seem to believe that species are distinguished by Mendelian characters, have not made systematic experiments on the crossing of species in order to prove or disprove their belief.

For my own part I cannot help thinking that the origin of varieties in species in a domesticated or cultivated state is in a sense pathological.

Such variation doubtless occurs in nature, but not with such luxuriance.

The breeds of domestic fowls differ so greatly that Bateson and others refuse to believe that they have all arisen from the single species _Gallus bankiva_. It seems to me from the evidence that there cannot be any doubt that they have so arisen. One fact that impresses my mind is that if we consider colour variations in domesticated animals, we find that a similar set of colours has arisen in the most diverse kinds of animals with sometimes certain markings or colours peculiar to one group, _e.g._ dappling in horses, wing bars in pigeons. Thus in various kinds of Mammals and Birds we have white and black, red or yellow, chocolate with various degrees of dilution, and piebald combinations. Why should forms originally so different, as the cat with its striped markings and the rabbit with no markings at all, give rise to the same colour varieties? It seems probable that the reason is that the original form had the small number of pigments which occur mixed together in very small particles, and that in the descendants the single pigments have separated out, with increase or decrease in different cases. It is true that historical evidence tends to show that the greatest variations, such as albinism in one direction or excess of pigment in the other in the Sweet Pea, were the first to arise (see Bateson, Presidential Address to British a.s.sociation, Australia, 1914, Part I.), and the splitting appears often to be intentionally produced by crossing these extreme variations with the original form, but the possibility remains that the conditions of domestication, abundant food, security and reduced activity, lead to irregularity in the process of heredity. In any case the mere separation among different individuals of factors originally inherited together in one complex does not account for the origin of the complex or of the factors. This is somewhat the same idea as that of Bateson when he states that it is easy to understand the origin of a recessive character but difficult to conceive the origin of a dominant.

The point, however, which I desire most to emphasise is that the investigations we have been discussing are concerned with variations which have no relation whatever to adaptation, and afford no explanation of the evolution of adaptations. These variations perform no function in the life of the individual, have no relation to external conditions, either in the sense of being caused by special conditions or fitting the individual to live in special conditions. A still more important fact is that they do not explain the origin of metamorphosis. They do not arise by a metamorphosis: in the case of the rose comb of fowls the chick is not hatched with a single comb which gradually changes into a rose comb, but the rose comb develops directly from the beginning. Mutationists and Mendelians do not seem in the least to appreciate the importance of metamorphosis or of development generally in considering the relation of the mutations or factors which they study to evolution in general, because they have not grasped the fact that there are two kinds of characters to be explained, adaptational and non-adaptational. T. H. Morgan, for example, [Footnote: _A Critique of the Theory of Evolution_, p. 67 (Princeton, U.S.A., and London, 1916).] describes a mutation in _Drosophila_ consisting in the loss of the eyes, and triumphantly remarks: 'Formerly we were taught that eyeless animals arose in caves. This case shows that they may also arise suddenly in gla.s.s milk-bottles by a change in a single factor.' As it stands the statement is perfectly true, but it is obvious that the writer does not believe that the darkness of caves ever had anything to do with the loss of eyes. It is almost as though a man should discover that blindness in a certain case was due to a congenital, i.e. gametic, defect, and should then scoff at the idea that any person could become blind by disease. Some of those who specialise in the investigation of genetics seem to give inadequate consideration to other branches of biology. It is a well-established fact that in the mole, in _Proteus_, and in _Ambtyopsis_ (the blind fish of the Kentucky caves), the eyes develop in the embryo up to a certain stage in a perfectly normal way and degenerate afterwards, and that they are much better developed in the very young animal than in the adult. Does this metamorphosis take place in the blind _Drosophila_ of the milk-bottle? The larva of the fly is, I believe, eyeless like the larvae of other Diptera, but Morgan says nothing of the eye being developed in the imago or pupa and then degenerating. There is therefore no relation or connexion between the mutation he describes and the evolution of blindness in cave animals. It is a truth, too often insufficiently appreciated by biologists, that sound reasoning is quite as important in science as fact or experiment. Loeb [Footnote: _The Organism as a Whole_, p. 319 (New York and London, 1916).]

also endeavours to prove that the blindness of cave animals is no evidence of the influence of darkness in causing degeneration of the eyes. He refers to experiments by Uhlenhuth, who transplanted eyes of young Salamanders into different parts of their bodies where they were no longer connected with the optic nerves. These eyes underwent a degeneration which was followed by a complete regeneration. He showed that this regeneration took place in complete darkness, and that the transplanted eyes remained normal when the Salamanders were kept in the dark for fifteen months.

Hence the development of the eyes does not depend on the influence of light or on the functional action of the organs. But it must be obvious to any biologist who has thoroughly considered the problem, that this experiment has little to do with the question of the cause of blindness in cave animals. No one ever supposed that cave fishes became blind in fifteen months, or in fifteen years. The experiment cited merely proves that in the individual the embryonic or young eye will continue developing by heredity even after it is transplanted and in the absence of light. But the eye of the Mammal normally develops in the uterus in the absence of light.

In his remarks concerning _Typhlogobius_, a blind fish on the coast of southern California, Loeb seems to be mistaken with regard to the facts.

He states that this fish lives 'in the open, in shallow water under rocks, in holes occupied by shrimps.' According to Professor Eigenmann the same species of shrimp is found all over the Bay of San Diego, and is accompanied by other genera of goby, such as _Clevelandia_ and _Gillichthys_, which have eyes; but these fishes live outside the holes, and only retreat into them when frightened, while the blind species is found only at Point Loma, and never leaves the burrows of the shrimp. It would appear, therefore, that _Typhlogobius_ lives in almost if not quite complete darkness, instead of being, as Loeb states, 'blind in spite of exposure to light,' while the closely allied forms which are exposed to light are not blind.

Loeb states, on the authority of Eigenmann, that all those forms which live in caves were adapted to life in the dark before they entered the cave, because they are all negatively heliotropic and positively stereotropic, and with these tropisms would be forced to enter a cave whenever they were put at the entrance. Even those among the Amblyopsidae which live in the open have the tropisms of the cave dweller. But these latter are not blind, and the argument only tends to show that the blind fish _Amblyopsis_ entered the caves before it was blind. Nocturnal animals generally must be said to be negatively heliotropic, but these usually have larger and more sensitive eyes than the diurnal.

It is said, however, that _Chologaster aga.s.sizii_, which is not blind, lives in the underground streams of Kentucky and Tennessee, but I think it is open to doubt whether it is a species entirely confined to darkness.

Another point which Loeb omits to mention is the absence of pigment in cave animals, especially Vertebrates such as _Amblyopsis_ and _Proteus_.

If absence of light is not the cause of blindness in these cases, how is it that the blindness is always a.s.sociated with absence of pigment, since we know that the latter in Fishes and Amphibia is due to the absence of light? It has been shown that _Proteus_ when kept in the light develops some amount of pigment, although it does not become pigmented to the same degree as ordinary Amphibia. We have here, I think, an example of the essential difference between mutations and somatic modifications. Absence of the gametic factor or factors for pigmentation results in albinism, and no amount of exposure to light produces pigmentation in albinos, _e.g._ albino Axolotls which are well known in captivity. Absence of light, on the other hand, prevents the development of pigment. The question therefore is whether the somatic modification is inherited. The fact that _Proteus_ does not rapidly become as deeply coloured when exposed to light as ordinary Amphibia shows that the gametic factors for pigmentation have been modified as well as the somatic tissues.

Loeb attributes the blindness of cave fishes to a disturbance in the circulation and mutation of the eyes originally occurring as a mutation.

But how could an explanation of this kind be applied to the case of _Anableps tetrophthalmus_, in which each eye is divided by a part.i.tion of the cornea and lens into an upper half adapted for vision in air and a lower half for vision in water? This fish lives in the smooth water of estuaries in Central America, and swims habitually with the horizontal part.i.tion of the lens level with the surface of the water. It is impossible to understand in this case, firstly, how a mutation could cause the eyes to be divided and doubly adapted to two different optic conditions, and, secondly, how at the same time a convenient 'tropism'

should occur which caused the animal to swim with its eyes half in and half out of water. Are we to suppose that the upper half of the body or eye had a positive heliotropism and the lower half a negative heliotropism? The fact is that the fish swims at the surface in order to watch for and feed on floating particles. The tropism concerned is the food tropism, but what is gained by calling the search for food common to all active animals a tropism, and how is the search for food before the food is perceptible to the senses, before it can act as a stimulus on a food-sensitive substance in the body, to be compared to a tropism at all?

Loeb undertakes to prove that the organism as a whole acts automatically according to physicochemical laws. But he misses the question of evolution altogether. For example, he quotes Gudernatsch as having proved that legs can be induced to grow in tadpoles at any time, even in very young specimens, by feeding them with thyroid gland. Loeb writes: 'The earlier writers explained the growth of the legs in the tadpole as a case of an adaptation to life on land. We know through Gudernatsch that the growth of the legs can be produced at any time by feeding the animal with the thyroid gland.' Obviously he thinks that these two propositions are contradictory to each other, whereas there is no contradiction, between them at all. Loeb actually supposes that the thyroid is the cause of the development of the legs. Logically, if this were the case it would follow that if we fed an eel or a snake with thyroid it would develop legs like those of a frog, and if a man were injected with extract of the testes of a stag he would develop antlers on his forehead. It will be obvious to most biologists that the thyroid, whether that of the tadpole itself or that which is supplied as food, only causes the development of legs because the hereditary power to develop legs is already present. The question is how this hereditary power was evolved. Legs _are_ an adaptation to life on land. What we have to consider and to investigate is whether the legs arose as a gametic mutation or as a direct result of locomotion on land.

The general result of clinical and experimental evidence is to show that the hormone of the thyroid is necessary to normal development. The arrest of development in cretinous children is due to some deficiency of thyroid secretion, and is counteracted by the administration of thyroid extract.

Excess of the secretion produces a state of restlessness and excitement a.s.sociated with an abnormally rapid rate of metabolism and protrusion of the eye-b.a.l.l.s (Graves' disease). The physiological text-books, however, say nothing of precocity of development in children as a result of hyperthyroidism. This, however, is undoubtedly what occurs in the case of tadpoles. The legs would naturally develop at some time or other, after a prolonged period of larval life. Feeding with thyroid causes them to develop at once. I have repeated Gudernatsch's experiment with the following results:--

This year I had a considerable number of tadpoles of the common English frog, which were hatched between March 26 and March 29. On April 12, when they had all pa.s.sed the stage of external gills and developed internal gills and opercula, I divided them into two lots, one in a shallow pie-dish, the other in a gla.s.s cylinder. To one lot I gave a portion of rabbit's thyroid, to the other a piece of rabbit's liver. They fed eagerly on both. Afterwards I obtained at intervals of a week or so the thyroid of a sheep. I have seen no precise details of Gudernatsch's method of feeding tadpoles, but my own method was simply to put a piece of thyroid into the water containing the tadpoles and leave it there for several days, then to take it out and put in another piece, changing the water when it seemed to be getting foul.

April 22. Noticed that the non-thyroid tadpoles were larger than those fed on thyroid. Changed the former into the pie-dish and the latter into the gla.s.s jar, to make sure that the difference in size was not due to larger s.p.a.ce.

May 3. Only eighteen of the non-thyroid tadpoles surviving, owing to the water having become foul, but these are three times as large as those fed on thyroid. In the latter no trace of hind-legs was visible, but the abdominal region was much emaciated and contracted, while the head region was broader.

May 4. Noticed minute white buds of hind-legs in the thyroid-fed tadpoles.

May 6. A number of the thyroid-fed were dying, and the skin and opercular membranes were swollen out away from the tissues beneath.

Largest normal tadpole, 2.7 cm. long.

body, 1.0 "

tail, 1.7 "

Largest thyroid-fed tadpole, 1.1 cm. long.

body, 0.5 "

tail, 0.6 "

May 10. A great number of the thyroid-fed dead and the rest dying, lying at the bottom motionless. They now had the tail much shorter, and the fore-legs showing as well as the hind, but the latter not very long, and without joints or toes.

Period from first feeding with thyroid, thirty days. I now decided to feed the controls with thyroid, expecting that as they were large and vigorous they would have strength enough to complete the metamorphosis and become frogs.

May 15. Fed the controls with thyroid for first time.

The smallest of them was in total length 1.7 cm.

body, 0.7 "

tail, 1.0 "

The largest measured was in total length 2.2 "

body, 0.8 "

tail, 1.4 "

May 25. All but two of the tadpoles dead. The tails were only half the original length, all had well-developed hind-legs, some with toes, but the fore-legs were beneath the opercula, not projecting from the surface.

Smallest total length, 1.2 cm.

body, 0.5 "

tail, 0.7 "

Largest total length, 1.8 "

body, 0.7 "

tail, 1.1 "

These last measurements were made after the tadpoles had been preserved in spirit, and were therefore doubtless somewhat less than in the fresh condition. Making allowance for this it is evident that the tails had undergone reduction as part of the metamorphosis, but the body was also shorter. There is some reason therefore for concluding that actual reduction in size of body occurs as the result of metamorphosis induced by thyroid feeding. As in the other case the skin and opercular membranes were distended by liquid beneath them.

The total period of the change in this second experiment was ten days.

I conclude that the amount of thyroid eaten was so excessive as to cause pathological conditions as well as precocious metamorphosis, so that the animals died without completing the process.