necessary manner contingent on growthã; and that he should see no reason why complicated structures of the adult ãshould not have been sketched out {59} with all their parts in proper proportion, as soon as any part became visible.ã It would seem to me that even the most elementary attention to form in its relation to growth would have removed most of Darwinãs 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 problem15.
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 =ã₤( Rÿ£¢ãý ãã₤ R )ã₤ãã₤ T , and from this we may calculate, as already indicated, the rate of growth in terms of surface