On Growth and Form

In the foregoing chapters of this book we have attempted to study the inter-relations of growth and form, and the part which certain of the physical forces play in this complex...

When we study magnitude by itself, apart, that is to say, from the gradual changes to which it may be subject, we are dealing with a something which may be adequately represente...

The very numerous examples of spiral conformation which we meet with in our studies of organic form are peculiarly adapted to mathematical methods of investigation. But ere we b...

Protoplasm, as we have already said, is a fluid or rather a semifluid substance, and we need not pause here to attempt to describe the particular properties of the semifluid, co...

The deposition of inorganic material in the living body, usually in the form of calcium salts or of silica, is a very common and wide-spread phenomenon. It begins in simple ways...

The problems which we have been considering, and especially that of the bee’s cell, belong to a class of “isoperimetrical” problems, which deal with figures whose surface is a m...

We now pass from the consideration of the solitary cell to that of cells in contact with one another,—to what we may call in the first instance “cell-aggregates,”—through which...

There is a certain large class of morphological problems of which we have not yet spoken, and of which we shall be able to say but little. Nevertheless they are so important, so...

In the early days of the cell-theory, more than seventy years ago, Goodsir was wont to speak of cells as “centres of growth” or “centres of nutrition,” and to consider them as e...

To terms of magnitude, and of direction, must we refer all our conceptions of form. For the form of an object is defined when we know its magnitude, actual or relative, in vario...

We have had so much to say on the subject of shell-spirals that we must deal briefly with the analogous problems which are presented by the horns of sheep, goats, antelopes and...

We have already dealt in a few simple cases with the shells of the Foraminifera[538]; and we have seen that wherever the shell is but a single unit or single chamber, its form m...

The eggs of birds and all other hard-shelled eggs, such as those of the tortoise and the crocodile, are simple solids of revolution; but they differ greatly in form, according t...

The beautiful configurations produced by the orderly arrangement of leaves or florets on a stem have long been an object of admiration and curiosity. Leonardo da Vinci would see...

A very important corollary to, or amplification of the theory of surface tension is to be found in the modern chemico-physical doctrine of Adsorption[324]. In its full statement...

Of the chemistry of his day and generation, Kant declared that it was “a science, but not science,”—“eine Wissenschaft, aber nicht Wissenschaft”; for that the criterion of physi...

A number of phenomena connected with the linear rate of regeneration are illustrated and epitomised in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 40), which I have constructed from certain...

We have made use in the last chapter of the mathematical principle of Geodetics (or Geodesics) in order to explain the conformation of a certain class of sponge-spicules; but th...

CONDITIONS OF LIFE IN THE SEA. A short account of Quantitative Marine Biological Research. By JAMES JOHNSTONE, Fisheries Laboratory, University of Liverpool. With chart and 31 i...