slight degree, through the effects of the increased use or disuse of
parts.” This whole argument is remarkable, in more ways than we need
try to deal with here; but it is especially remarkable that Darwin
should begin by casting doubt upon the broad fact that a “difference
in structure between the embryo and the adult” is “in some necessary
manner contingent on growth”; and that he should see no reason why
complicated structures of the adult “should not have been sketched out
{59} with all their parts in proper proportion, as soon as any part
became visible.” It would seem to me that even the most elementary
attention to form in its relation to growth would have removed most of
Darwin’s difficulties in regard to the particular phenomena which he
is here considering. For these phenomena are phenomena of form, and
therefore of relative magnitude; and the magnitudes in question are
attained by growth, proceeding with certain specific velocities, and
lasting for certain long periods of time. And it is accordingly obvious
that in any two related individuals (whether specifically identical or
not) the differences between them must manifest themselves gradually,
and be but little apparent in the young. It is for the same simple
reason that animals which are of very different sizes when adult,
differ less and less in size (as well as in form) as we trace them
backwards through the foetal stages.
――――――――――
Though we study the visible effects of varying rates of growth
throughout wellnigh all the problems of morphology, it is not very
often that we can directly measure the velocities concerned. But owing
to the obvious underlying importance which the phenomenon has to the
morphologist we must make shift to study it where we can, even though
our illustrative cases may seem to have little immediate bearing on the
morphological problem[93].
In a very simple organism, of spherical symmetry, such as the single
spherical cell of Protococcus or of Orbulina, growth is reduced to
its simplest terms, and indeed it becomes so simple in its outward
manifestations that it is no longer of special interest to the
morphologist. The rate of growth is measured by the rate of change in
length of a radius, i.e. _V_ = (_R′_ − _R_)/_T_, and from this we may
calculate, as already indicated, the rate of growth in terms of surface
and of volume. The growing body remains of constant form, owing to the
symmetry of the system; because, that is to say, on the one hand the
pressure exerted by the growing protoplasm is exerted equally in all
directions, after the manner of a hydrostatic pressure, which indeed it
actually is: while on the other hand, the “skin” or surface layer of
the cell is sufficiently {60} homogeneous to exert at every point an
approximately uniform resistance. Under these conditions then, the rate
of growth is uniform in all directions, and does not affect the form of
the organism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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