It is important to find that those animals whose growth and regeneration
are influenced by such external factors as light, gravity, and contact
are attached animals that stand in a constant relation to these physical
agents. They form only a very small part of the entire number of animals
in which regeneration takes place. Animals that constantly move about
are not, as a rule, influenced during their growth and regeneration by
gravity and contact, and under natural circumstances they are always
changing their position in regard to these agents. Temperature, and
food, and substances in solution act alike on fixed and free forms, and
they are, it appears, both influenced in the same way by these agents.
The most significant fact that has been discovered in connection with
the influence of external factors on regeneration is that the same
factors that influence the normal growth of the organism also affect in
the same way the regeneration.
As yet an analysis of the external factors that influence growth has not
been made out as completely for animals as for plants, especially in
those cases in which the result is determined by several factors at the
same time. An examination of the factors that influence regeneration in
plants will be made in a later chapter. First, however, the internal
factors of regeneration in animals will be considered.
CHAPTER III
THE INTERNAL FACTORS OF REGENERATION IN ANIMALS
The comparatively few cases in animals in which regeneration has been
shown to be influenced by external factors have been given in the
preceding chapter. In all other cases that are known the factors are
internal. By this is meant that we cannot trace any direct connection
between the result and any of the known external agents that have been
shown in other cases to have an influence on regeneration. Certain
external conditions must, of course, be present, such as a supply of
oxygen, a certain temperature, moisture in some cases, etc., in order
that the process may go on, but they are without influence on the kind
of regeneration, and are necessary for all parts alike.
_POLARITY AND HETEROMORPHOSIS_
Trembley, Spallanzani, and Bonnet knew that, in general, at the end of a
piece of an animal from which a head has been cut off a new head
develops, and from the posterior cut-surface of a piece a new posterior
part is regenerated. Allman was the first to give the name “polarity” to
this phenomenon.[25]
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