Thatsachen und Auslegungen in Bezug auf Regeneration

Abstract

PROF. AUGUST WEISMANN'S essay on regeneration, which appeared simultaneously in Natural Science and in the Anatomischer Anzeiger, has now been published in pamphlet form, and well deserves the careful consideration of biologists. Its contents may be divided into two parts, the first of which is independent of the second. In the first part, Prof. Weismann expounds his previously expressed conclusion that regeneration is an adaptive phenomenon—“that the regenerative power of a part is to be considered, not as a direct and necessary expression of the nature of the organism, but rather as a capability which, though it may be absent, is found wherever it is necessary in the interests of species-preservation.” In other words, the power of regenerating lost parts, though depending primarily (like all other vital qualities) on the properties of organised protoplasm, has been defined and perfected in the course of natural selection in those organisms which are in the ordinary course of their life frequently liable to serious mutilation. This is not a new idea, for, as Weismann notices, Réaumur made, in the first half of the eighteenth century, the induction that the power of regeneration was especially characteristic of animals whose brittle body was frequently liable to risk of breakage, and also of those, like earthworms, which are liable to be partially devoured. The Italian naturalist Lessona gave more precise expression to the same induction in what is sometimes called “Lessona's law,” while Darwin regarded the regenerative capacity as interpretable on his theory of the selective origin of adaptations.

Thatsachen und Auslegungen in Bezug auf Regeneration.

Von August Weismann. Pp. 31. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1899.)