The Biological Problem Of To-day Part 3

THIRD GROUP OF FACTS.--THE PHENOMENA OF REPRODUCTION AND REGENERATION IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS.

The numerous phenomena of reproduction and regeneration appear to support the principle of doubling division--that is, of division in which the germinal substance is handed on to every part of the organism. Our review may be short, as the phenomena are matters of common knowledge.

In nearly all plants there exist, widely spread through the body, cells and cell-groups, which may be induced, by inner or outer influences, to give rise to a bud; the bud grows out into a shoot, ultimately producing flowers and genital products. Such happens both in parts of the plant above the ground and below it; in the latter case shoots arise from roots, and reproduce the species in the ordinary s.e.xual fas.h.i.+on by bearing s.e.xual products.

Thus, in the case of _Funaria hygrometrica_, a little moss, one may chop up the plant into tiny fragments, scatter these on damp earth, and see numerous moss-plants reproduced from the little groups of cells. By cutting little pieces from a willow, an experimenter may cause the production from slips of thousands of willow-trees, each with all the characters of the species, so that there must have been contained in each of the little pieces of tissue hereditary ma.s.ses with the characters of the whole plant.

Separate pieces of the leaves of many plants, as of the begonia, produce buds from which the whole plant may grow out.

An apt.i.tude for reproduction like that in plants exists in many coelenterates, worms, and tunicates. The polyps of hydroids and of bryozoa, the stolons of an ascidian (_Clavellina lepadiformis_), may give rise to buds in many places, and these grow up into the perfect hydroid, bryozoon, or ascidian. There must, then, be contained in the cells of the bud the germinal rudiments of the whole animal; this conclusion is more necessary as the individuals, produced from the buds, in due course bear s.e.xual products.

Although in many higher animals and plants one sees that cells with the capacity for reproduction are limited to special areas, still, the capacity for regeneration often is very great. In a wonderful fas.h.i.+on animals will reproduce lost parts, sometimes of most complicated structure; just as a crystal, from which a corner has been chipped, will perfect itself again when brought into a solution of its own salt. A _Hydra_, from which the oral disc and tentacles have been cut off, a _Nais_ deprived of its head or of its tail, a snail of which a tentacle with its terminal eye has been amputated, will reproduce the lost parts, sometimes in a very short time.

The cells lying at the wounded spot begin to bud, producing a layer or lump, the cells of which resemble embryonic cells. From this embryonic ma.s.s of cells the lost organs and tissues arise--in _Hydra_, the oral disc with its tentacles; in _Nais_, the anterior end with its sense-organs and special groups of muscles; in the snail, the tentacle with its compound eye built up of elements so different as retinal-rods, pigment-cells, nerve-cells, lens, and so forth.

Even among vertebrates, in which the capacity for regeneration is the least, as in the restoration of the wounded parts small defects occur, lizards can reproduce a lost tail, tritons an amputated limb. From a bud of embryonic tissue there are elaborated in the one case whole vertebrae, with their muscles and tendons, and part of the spinal cord with its ganglia and nerves, in the other case, the numerous, differently-shaped, skeletal pieces of the hand or foot, with their appropriate muscles and nerves. The regeneration, moreover, is in strict conformity with the characters of the species concerned. Thus, from the facts of regeneration also, we must infer that cells in the vicinity of these casual wounds possess not only the special qualities which they possess as definite parts of a definite whole, but also the characters of the whole, and thus have the power of becoming buds, from which a complicated part of the body may be reproduced with the appropriate characters of the species.

FOURTH GROUP OF FACTS.--THE PHENOMENA OF HETEROMORPHOSIS.[12]

Of all the facts brought forward here, the phenomena of heteromorphosis perhaps bear most strongly in favour of my conception, and offer difficulties most irreconcilable with Weismann's theory.

Loeb uses the word 'heteromorphosis' to denote the ability possessed by organisms, under the stimulus of external forces, to produce organs on parts of the organism where such do not occur normally, or the power to replace lost parts by parts unsimilar to them in form and function.

Regeneration is the reproduction of parts like those lost; heteromorphosis is the reproduction of parts unlike those lost.

Heteromorphoses are well known in plant physiology. When one cuts a slip from a willow, one may make the cut at the bottom of the slip and the cut at the top in any part of the willow-twig, yet still the lower end of the slip always produces rootlets, which are organs not normal to that part of the twig, while shoots will rise from the upper end. Moreover, either end of the slip may be made the root portion, and it is clear, therefore, that in every small area there are cell-groups present able to bear roots or shoots according to the determining conditions; and therefore that, in addition to the characters active at any time, there are present the germinal rudiments for shoots and roots, and, indeed, for the whole organism, since the shoots ultimately may bear genital products.

When the prothallus of a fern has developed normally, it is a flattened leaf-like structure which bears rootlets and male and female genital organs on the lower surface, _i.e._, on that turned from the light. But the experimenter may reverse this order, by artificially shading the upper surface, and strongly illuminating the lower surface.

Among the most interesting heteromorphoses are the galls, produced upon young plants when certain insects lay eggs on them, or when plant-lice irritate their tissues. From these abnormal stimuli there result active ma.s.ses of cells which grow into organs of definite form and of complex structure. The galls, moreover, differ widely, in correspondence with the specific stimulus which was their initial cause, and with the specific substance, the stimulation of which resulted in the formation of a gall. By the action of different insects upon the same plant different galls are produced, and the galls of different plants may be distinguished systematically.

Blumenbach has already brought forward the existence of galls as an argument against preformation, holding them to be structures produced epigenetically, and, therefore, unrepresented by rudiments in the germ. I, also, consider them witnesses against Weismann's germplasm. They teach us that the cells of the plant-body may serve purposes quite different from those arranged for in the course of development; that cells modify their form in correspondence with novel conditions, and that they are forced into forming special structures, not by special determinants in the germ, but by external stimulants.

Galls exhibit yet another instructive kind of heteromorphosis.

Even the tissue of a leaf, turned into a gall by pathological conditions, retains the power of producing roots. Beyerinck has shown that galls of _Salix purpurea_, planted in moist earth, bear rootlets identical with those of the normal plant. As the roots of all woody plants are able to bear advent.i.tious buds, De Vries thinks it probable that one could rear a whole willow-tree from a gall. That would imply that all the inheritable characters of the willow were contained even in the gall.

Loeb has produced heteromorphoses experimentally upon many lower animals, among which were _Tubularia_, _Cerianthus_, and _Cione intestinalis_.

In _Tubularia mesembryanthemum_, a hydroid polyp, there are stalk, root, and polyp-head. If one cut off the head, a new head will be formed in a few days, this being a case of regeneration. On the other hand, a heteromorphosis may be produced by modifying the experiment as follows: Both root and head must be cut from the stem; if the lopped piece of the stem be stuck in the sand of the aquarium by the end that bore the head, then the original aboral pole in a few days produces a head; if the lopped piece of stem be supported horizontally in the water, then each end of it produces a head.

In a _Cerianthus membranaceus_ (Fig. 1), the body was opened by a cut some distance below the mouth, whereupon buds appeared on the lower edge of the slit, where the experimenter had prevented coalescent growth. These buds gave rise to inner and outer tentacles, and an oral disc was produced.

Thus, artificially, an animal with two mouth-openings or two heads was produced; and, similarly, animals with a row of three or more heads may be produced.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.--CERIANTHUS MEMBRANACEUS, in which a second oral aperture, surrounded by tentacles, has appeared as the result of an artificial slit. (_After Loeb._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.--CIONE INTESTINALIS, in which eye-specks resembling those surrounding the mouth have appeared in the neighbourhood of an artificial opening (_a_).]

The third animal in which heteromorphosis was produced artificially was _Cione intestinalis_, a solitary ascidian, an animal more highly organized.

In _Cione_ (Fig. 2) the edges of the mouth-opening and of the cloaca are provided with numerous, simple eye-spots. Loeb, in a series of experiments, made incisions either into the inhalent or the exhalent tube; after a time eye-spots appeared round the edges of the cut; then the margin of the artificial oral opening grew out into a tube, even longer than the normal oral tube. 'If several incisions be made simultaneously at different places on the same animal, then several new tubes arise simultaneously.'

In the three cases, the cut surfaces, from which in _Tubularia_, a head, in _Cerianthus_, tentacles, and in _Cione_, eye-spots, took their origin, were made in different parts of the bodies and in different directions. Thus, again, we have an indication that there are present in most regions of the body cell-groups, which may give rise to complex organs in unnatural positions, and yet bearing the specific stamp.

These examples might easily be multiplied, and they serve to show that heteromorphosis in plants and animals implies the presence of numerous latent characters in cells and tissues, in addition to the characters proper to their normal position in the organism. These latent characters, under the impulse of stimulation from without, manifest themselves in abnormal formation of organs in abnormal situations. Save that they are in abnormal situation, the induced organs conform to the specific type in all respects, and indicate that all the cells of an organism contain, as the result of doubling division, the characters of germinal rudiments of the whole organism. On the other hand, heteromorphoses bear heavily against the doctrine of determinants. For it is impossible that, in the architecture of the germplasm, there can be provision, in the form of special determinants, for events so foreign to the natural course of development as these arbitrary, outer stimulants.

Heteromorphosis may be extended to include more than Loeb intended by reckoning under it artificially-produced modification of the early stages in the cleavage of the egg. I have in mind those experiments by Driesch, Wilson, and myself, in which the first cells of the embryonic history were induced to form parts of the embryo, to which in the normal course they would not have given rise. In these cases heteromorphosis begins from the first cleavage of the egg.

In an ingenious way Driesch compressed fertilised echinoderm eggs between gla.s.s plates, and so secured that the first sixteen cells were separated, not by alternate vertical and horizontal planes, as in the normal development, but only by vertical planes. In the resulting one-layered plate of cells the nuclei had relative positions quite different from the normal. As, notwithstanding this, the distorted eggs developed into normal plutei larvae, Driesch inferred that the cell material composing the earliest cells of echinoids is equivalent in all the cells, and that the cells may be pushed over one another like a heap of b.a.l.l.s without disturbing in the slightest their capacity to develop. Such a permutation could be without injury to the developmental product only if one nucleus had the same qualities as another; that is to say, only if all the nuclei had arisen from the nucleus of the fertilized egg by doubling division.

Driesch is right to regard these experiments as incompatible with Weismann's theory. 'Only consider,' he remarks, 'how great a number of "supplemental hypotheses," how many "accessory determinants," would be required to make specification of the early stages of a development in which any nucleus may take the place of any other nucleus in the whole embryo.'

I myself have carried out similar experiments upon frogs' eggs--experiments with a double interest. The frog's egg has the poles different, and so has a definite orientation. Weismann and Roux themselves have used these objects to support their view that, at the first cleavage, nuclei with different qualities are formed.

On p. 64 of the English edition Weismann remarks: 'The fact that the right and left halves of the body can vary independently in bilaterally symmetrical animals points to the conclusion that all the determinants are present in pairs in the germplasm. As, moreover, in many of these animals--_e.g._, in the frog--the division of the ovum into the two first embryonic cells indicates a separation of the body into right and left halves, it follows that the _id_ of germplasm itself possesses a bilateral structure, and that it also divides so as to give rise to the determinants of the right and left halves of the body. This ill.u.s.tration may be taken as a further proof of our view of the constant architecture of the germplasm.'

Roux[13] has based his mosaic theory upon experiments upon frogs' eggs.

According to the theory, the first two segmentation spheres contain not only all the formative material for the right and left halves of the embryo respectively, but also the differentiating and elaborating forces for these, so that on the destruction of one cell, the other can give rise only to one lateral half of the embryo (hemiembryo lateralis). Roux, therefore, considers that by the first cleavage the nuclear material is broken up into unlike halves, by which the development of the corresponding cells is directed diversely, _i.e._, is determined in a specific fas.h.i.+on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.--DIAGRAMS OF THE EGGS OF FROGS, which show how alteration of the cleavage process changes the mode in which the nuclear material is distributed. The nuclei indicated by the same numbers have the same descent in all the diagrams. All the eggs are viewed from the animal pole. A. Normally developing eggs. B. Eggs developing under compression by horizontal plates. C. Eggs developing under compression by vertical plates.]

The error in these representations of Weismann and of Roux has been shown by varied experiments of my own. The eggs of frogs on the point of cleaving were flattened to a disc between vertically or horizontally placed gla.s.s-plates. In the first case they were flattened in the dorsoventral direction, _i.e._, the axis pa.s.sing through the animal and vegetative pole was shortened; in the second case an axis at right angles to this was shortened. In both cases the course of cleavage, and the resulting distribution of the nuclei in the yolk, was artificially modified.

The diagrams A, B, C (Fig. 3) will make the results plain to the reader. A, represents the distribution of the nuclei after normal cleavage; B, the same, when the egg was pressed between horizontally-arranged parallel gla.s.s-plates; C, the same, where the flattening was produced by vertically-placed parallel gla.s.s-plates.[14]

The diagrams show the positions of the segmentation spheres and of the contained nuclei as seen from the animal pole. In stages where two layers of cells as a result of division lay one above the other, the cells of the lower layer are distinguished in the figure by shading. In the three diagrams the nuclei are numbered so that the reader may know how far they are removed from the nuclei of the first two segmentation spheres. The numbers are further exhibited in the following two genealogical trees:

1 ------------ / 3 4 ------ ------ / / 7 8 9 10 --- --- --- --- / / / / 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

2 ------------ / 5 6 ------- ------- / / 11 12 13 14 --- --- --- --- / / / / 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

In the three diagrams the nuclei with the same numbers have the same rank in descent, and therefore, according to the theory of Roux and Weismann, have the same qualities, while the nuclei with unlike numbers differ in qualities.

Let us now notice how the nuclei in the three processes of division, of which two are abnormal, are placed in the ma.s.s of the egg.

After the first division, the nuclei are alike in all three cases; after the second difference appears. In A1 and B1 nuclei 3 and 5 lie to the left; 4 and 6 to the right of the second cleavage-plane, which, according to Roux's hypothesis, corresponds to the median-plane of the future embryo; while in C they are forced into two layers, one above the other, nuclei 4 and 6 being dorsal, 3 and 5 ventral.

In the third cycle of division there is no agreement between the three cases.

In the diagrams A2 and B2 the nuclei still lie similarly to the right and left of the middle line; but in A2 they are arranged in two layers, in B2 in a single layer. The nuclei 8, 10, 12, and 14, which compose the upper layer in A2, form the middle of the disc in B2; and 7 and 9, 11 and 13, the ventral nuclei of A2, occupy the ends of the single-layered disc of B2, being closely pressed against each other.

In the diagram C2 there is actually no median-plane after the third cycle of division. The nuclei 9, 10, 14, 13, which in A and B form the right side of the ma.s.s, here form a dorsal layer with nuclei 7, 8, 12, 11, forming a ventral layer. In the fourth cycle of division the nuclear matter is still more variously distributed through the ma.s.s, as may be seen from comparison of diagrams A3, B3, C3.

Although, under normal conditions, the multiplication and division of the nuclear material occurs in an almost invariable and definite fas.h.i.+on, the mere altering of the spherical form to a cylinder or to a disc produces a method of division completely different, so far as the nuclei are related to each other in a genealogical tree. In the one and the other method of division the nuclei are brought into relation with different regions of the protoplasmic ma.s.s, and are united with these regions to form cellular individuals.

I had quite enough reason for what I said in my essay: 'If the doctrine of Roux and Weismann be true, and the successive divisions by which nuclei arise really place different qualities in the nuclei--qualities according to which the ma.s.ses of protoplasm surrounding them become different and definite parts of the embryo--what a pretty set of malformations must result from eggs in which the nuclear matter has been shuffled about so wantonly! As such malformations do not occur, it is plain that the doctrine is untenable.'

We reach the same conclusion from consideration of the interesting experiments made by Driesch and Wilson upon the early stages of segmentation of the egg. In the cases of an echinoid and of amphioxus (Fig.

4) they succeeded in shaking apart the first two and the first four cells that arose in division of the egg; and they traced the subsequent development of these separated segmentation spheres.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4.--NORMAL AND FRACTIONAL GASTRULae AMPHIOXUS.