- tion alike raise problems of the highest importance.
Does the part become regenerated just as it was formed at first? Does the regeneration repeat the ontogeny? Is it true that a lost organ is never regenerated (the kidney for instance)? Does the symmetrical organ enjoy a compensating and hypertrophic development, as Ribbert has asserted? And further, if the organ be removed and transplanted to another position, can it be grafted there, as Y. Delage maintains? These are very important questions; but if we dwell upon them, we shall be diverted from our immediate object. Our task is to look at these facts from the point of view of their significant and characteristic meaning in vitality. Flourens invoked on their behalf the intervention of vital forces, plastic and morphoplastic. But, as we shall see later, these phenomena of cicatrization, of reparation, of regeneration, these more or less complete efforts for the re-establishment of the specific form, although they are found in all living beings in different degrees, are not exclusively confined to them. We find them again in some representatives of the mineral world—in crystals, for instance.
