Regeneration and Transplantation

Abstract

OF recent years there has been much experimenting and not a little theorising regarding regeneration and grafting. The results of the experiments have sometimes been very remarkable and full of theoretical suggestiveness, and they are now so numerous that a general survey of their import is very welcome. We have already a volume on regeneration by Prof. T. H. Morgan which has been of great service; we have now an analogous volume by Prof. Korschelt. He traces the phenomena of regeneration through the world of organisms, in unicellulars and multicellulars, in plants and in animals, in young forms and full-grown forms, showing the varied distribution of the regenerative capacity and its varied expressions, and always returning to the central question, How has it come about, and by what precise processes does it come about/that a lost part is re-grown and the intactness of the creature restored? Special sections of the book are devoted to a discussion of such subjects as the following:—autotomy, often-repeated regeneration, restitutions and regulations, heteromorphosis, atavism in regeneration, imperfect arid superfluous regeneration, the relation of the nervous system to regeneration, the relation of regeneration to nutrition, to reproduction, to age, and to environmental conditions. The author's exposition is lucid, and there is an illustration on every second page. In the second part of the book we find an account of grafting or transplantation in plants and in animals, with strange figures of grafted polyps and worms, pupæ and tadpoles, frogs and newts—an altogether quaint assemblage. At the end of the book there is an exhaustive bibliography, certainly amazing in its dimensions, very usefully subdivided into sections relating to different aspects of the subject. As to the general theory of regeneration, Prof. Korschelt seems to incline to a compromise between the views of Weismann and Morgan,.admitting that there is a great deal to be said on bpth sides. He seems—for he is anything but dogmatic—to believe that the regenerative capacity is a primary quality of living matter, which, along certain lines of evolution, has been accentuated and specialised by natural selection. Thus the regenerative capacity is, in general, a primary quality, but in particular cases an adaptive character.

Regeneration and Transplantation.

By Prof. E. Korschelt. Pp. 286; 144 figures. (Jena: G. Fischer, 1907.) Price 7 marks.