STRANGE GROTESQUE CREATURES.

Western Star, 22 December 1911, Page 4

STRANGE GROTESQUE CREATURES.

Hsu Its of amazing investigations i i ... the causes of the development the individual animal from the ;,nd experiments to determine v far the development may be armed from the lines of normal olatkn hitherto thought to be : id are told here by Professor Dr. limit Oppei, of the University of ; a lie, Germany. The researches to he recounted were ■ i cried on, it must be borne in mind, .ion the. first fertilised cell from .-.■hieh the animal in question springs, and not, as in other experiments in evolution, upon the developed creature. The remote, primal source, of life was manipulated to force it to give up the secret of life. Application of this principle opens llie -.-ay to carving out whole new - pecies for the use of man : in which Mm forms slowly moulded by Nature give place to forms more useful to man. It opens the way, too, for the creation of really perfect human children by the averting of all organic, malformations ! Here the experiments are told in detail by Dr. Oppel. Mechanical evolution, or experimen-

tal embryology, is the study of! the factors and causes which brings about complex results and features from an apparently simple egg; the reasons a frog form comes from a simple on?-ccIIcd egg ; the reasons a chicken form comes from another ; why a human form comes from another. It must begin with the study of a single individual, rather than the study of types or species. Dr. Rous took for his first subject the frog. The frog is an interesting animal. Its nervous structure and its bony structure are curiously human. It is complex and its eggs are easy to handle. It was proved experimentally that normally, immediately after fertilisation, the development began, and the egg began to show a furrow in its ; ( surface, dividing it. The egg became j two hemispheres, one light-coloured, j the other dark. Under the darker i hemisphere is a lighter-weight yolk j form which becomes the chief part of the embryo tadpole, and under that j t- ;1 heavier nourishment yolk, which foods the embryo. By a natural arrangement of these substances the egg, some time after its fertilisation, turns in its shell, and the dar- j ker si in comes uppermost. He found , (hat from the lighter side of the egg, j now undermost, the head of the crca- j l ure was formed ; the tail part formed in the darker hemisphere. This lirsi: furrow marks the egg into two symmetrical parts, from which comes the asymmetry of the mature body. Thus a once two chief normal evolutionary characteristics were deter-j mov'd. i But: after the first furrow appears | l here come others, not so deeply narked, which make the original .‘•.ingle cell a complex of several, all of which are, however, a part, of the ?gg. ft had been held that such ccMs ; part of a growing organism, could , not !o separated without the death i of ■’ he organism ensuing.

Or. Ko’ix tore the egg apart a lor." 1 the lines of the furrows. He placed ' the parts in a specially prepared | albuminous fluid. Then came the a-ton Ming discovery that not ,uily , «ere these disintegrated cell:-- alive ; in all their parts, but thud they j could apparently show conscious in- j teiligcnce and discrimination ' And now occurred a strange phuio-| mcnon. The three parts Joined at-j mo.t at once, firmly, ’s h ■ a.:ad cell, I and the tail cell, remained .stariuaary, as though considering what to do. At last, the other cell, clo-e to its former companion coll,, seemed to feel an attraction and fixed itself be- , side the body cell. Hut the tail end I was not so certain. It was feather! away from the proper plate. \t first ' it attached itself only t., the holy ’ cell. Later it found its approximate- j ly normal place, joined the body cell with the tail cell beyond and the yolk cells uppermost. Hut it is the manner of this up- j parentlv conscious selection of [dace’ that was s, i astounding. Th • part | travel-;, sometimes sinking, then join- ■ ing another cel!, then slipping try an- ! other and releasing its hold. It touches a third and fourth cell, us if seeking, trying to find, chooseing, pushing away, almost, as if it were not just a furrow ceil, but a conscious creature with likes and dislikes ! At last it tin is and weds. Normally, under the experiments, j if was found th a tfom o! -1 m' the cells did not find their right mates. Tf 1 11 monsters ensued. This was another — characteristic. So monsters were made to analyse the activity. Thus, then, another egg is divided, but only the head cell is placed among the part-: of the other egg. What happens ? Oru result of an experiment on these lines was that there began to farm fi tadpole, an arnluyo ~f (ho , frog, but with two growing heads ! If a third cell was added, there were three leads ! I>r three or two ho ly ell;., unit'd with the split, cells of one (".eg--there is then a creature of ■b (a bodies and one bead I So was created a three headed frog, V lira the stranger cells betrayed a hi inclination to coalesce they were amenable to force, flead cells can ■" grown anywhere. Ho can tail and I ody ceils. Weird, abnormal forms have been created, not through desire to tamper with Nature, hut to I'.'t the extent of this adaptability, i h ; plastic quality of the cell. There was the cell’s desire for growth ; there was the opportunity to grow. Trie cells took it. This independence of growth of the parts Tlon.x rails “self-differentiation” ; the . b gliding up of embryos from a num-

; her c,r !he parts lie calls “mosaic I The cells de.-eloped normally. That ; is, ;l frog with three heads had three active, working heads, six eyes, three . Lone,ues, three brains. So the salamander ; so the other forms of life i experimented with. Three bodies upon the one creature were each one ’ active. This sometimes had strange, suggestive results. A frog with two ! bodies —joined hack to had; —how did lit progress ? Would not the same - stimulus to move lie sent to each j body and both pairs of hind legs 1 then have the impulse to jump, but in opposite directions ? But if there was this power of I growth, of life, in each part of the cell, then what, of the egg separated along; its great furrow, divided actual - ly, into an arnbryo’s back and an embryo’s front ? How, then, would the cells act? And here came the second wonderful discovery, Roux calls it, “post general :ienA' ", In- c Tg was divided after the first • I'lirro,. Ing by a. heated needle. It, was found that in time the right half of the embryo developed of itself its missing right ! Mach half of an auto-furrowed egg then holds all the factors necessary to the growth of the entire future animal, and either half may develop the mature whole ! Hitherto it had been believed that

' the entire egg was needed to prodace the creature it held in embryo, 1 But if a whole creature could be developed from half an egg, could two whole creatures be developed | from the same egg ? The problem j was not at all the same, as a simple i formula of -logic will show. It was found that this could be done. The results of the growths were quite distinct from any regenerative process. Not only could two complete creatures he made, but by tying the egg instead of cutting it, the same results as in the experiments of ‘mosaic work’ were gained. Two heads could be developed on one body at will, or two tails on one body. A double headed salamander was grown in this way. He was not a | result of a '“mosaic.” or a fitting on jof head cells, but of actual gencraj tion of a head cell, where normally ! there should have been none. In this experiment th° intelligence of the : cells by the method of tying was deceived into thinking that they should | form into a head I When two creatures with two brains had thus been developed from I one egg, the experiment, of getting one creature from two eggs was I tried. It was successful ! it. was found that two eggs could be amalgamated to form one gigantic creature, A frog bred thus from two eggs was a trifle larger than twice Die size of the frog from which each of the eggs came. Three eggs produced a creature proportionately larger. Out. of a dozen eggs a truly monstrous frog morq than two feet high was formed. It would seem that this giant lain g process is indefinite ! it is of special interest to note ; that after the joining of two species , each part begins to grow more near- : ly lic the other. At last, though, [ two different species of frogs, a green water nog, and a brown water frog j i.Unf,/! r PI-icc-fj iirnflupofi . r r-11,r i

> . >. I v .(* liuvU ■ 1 liwcic [ll im;., in whi h the two parts wore easily roco ni.sal.de by the shadings, and those shillings or colours persisted til! Ihe death of the animal.

of the Roux school, has perfoi mud this experiment with partly giov. n embryos by keeping them in the ;■;> no albuminous fluid used by Roux. amputating certain parts and st i ' ing the wounds together. The wound d parts adhered and two embryos Te. eloped, hut this is not expeiinuuiarion from the actual first aH.i, n i- , ; { the egg. Similar ex- ' i' ri- <nts acre performed upon the e-g< of certain insects, and hnttcrl i ' were developed literally on a string. A row of three, with three i he,,dr, the bodies of each succeeding one g;owing from this head, the wiii s in normal place, were not in froij lent. Sometimes this condition ’ is seen in nature, as is the phono- j men on of the ''Siamese twins” in !m- j inanity. It is hut Nature of its own i volition manipulating the cells as j Roux has done. A striking instance of this adaptability (cell intelligence) is cited by ! Raid, a pupil of Roux, who bred dogs j without forelegs. These dogs were not merely a natural curiosity, hut of : great, value scientifically. Without forelegs they bad to stand and v.alk I like kanvaroos. When they bad heroine full grown Kuld ascertained by cai'tfn! measurement of all their; hones that their body structure had approached closely to , •••hut" «i uiC'T kafigatoo. And tills not by years of \ breeding, hut in a single individual ! , The tibia! bones were longer than the thigh bones, whereas in ordinary ! dogs the reverse is the case. Their . stmctuio as well as proportions was! changed. Their feet were lengthened, and they walked almost upon the I joint with a springing motion. All ; this involved deep structural changes.! There hardly can he any question rlnt. this change was due to cellular’ intelligence. The dog c.cahl not direct. the change Rom its brain, nor stop it. The dog's evolution was' against it. '1 he formation was due j to cellular independence and in tell iI gcnco. More remarkable were the experi- j meats of Rarfiirth and Tornicr, who. discovered a method of artificially causing the growth of additional 1 fingers on a uuhibia, frogs and water lizards, the same phenomenon that occurs frequently in human beings, i This was accomplished simply by | splitting the flesh of the embryonic; finger and la- ping it open. The cells j thought that the partition was nat- , ural, and that they must develop

mm ——innwnurniw itrvc>-,siu«a»',T «»-- *w»-*!SBsmv*cfim*3»etsmKtnmamaae :! of ill 1 miii ■. i. - i.■ a • t %■, ;i iid ] i j may bo nvr-- -0.-ue. ; 1 iter how in the J • j t.i ealrnent. of the snsr- o I h--, may no i ; averted. Mi-cheni a,l m olm.ion has ; ; midor its b in the mo: t. brilliant 1 . scientific minds of Du day. if is the , ounces' chihi of science. -,nd it may t! be Dio means of p- -mi- rating I he. race ! ■ “Uopidar kg-iorve- Siftings. ’’