Constant Differential Growth-ratios and their Significance

Abstract

ON Mr. Julian Huxley's very interesting results as to the fiddler-crab (NATURE, December 20, p. 895), I suggested at Cambridge that in his equation if we are to rationalise the index, comes nearer to his results than does and allows of the conceivable physiological explanation that the ratio of claw-weight to body-weight is the isogonous ratio multiplied by a ratio proportional to a growing area in the body. Thus the weight of the claw might be the isogonous weight multiplied by the ratio of an isogonous surface secreting a male hormone to a surface secreting a female hormone and remaining of constant area. I also pointed out that in the roe of the plaice we have a sexual appendage, shed every year, and every successive year showing an increasing rate between its weight and the weight of the body. The parallel proves so astonishingly close that I ask space to communicate the following two facts: